When Baseballers Play Cricket

 Sunday's game at our home ground was an unscheduled match arranged by the chairman, who in a parallel universe is the coach of Nottingham University's baseball team, a team that have supplied us with some integral parts of our team over the years. 

Indeed for this match, they were bringing a Luxembourg T20 international player, and another player who used to be on the books at Sussex. Better than any of us, at any rate. Although we were assured there were a few guys who had never played cricket before. 

Obviously, being a baseball team and all that, actual cricket kit was optional, and some of the players had moustaches and mullets that would have been entirely at home at Yankee stadium. 

We batted first, which meant that on this gloriously nice day, I got to go out and umpire in my wonky old straw hat for the first half of the innings. The former Sussex player, who seemed to rejoice in the name of "Bart Simpson", was evidently a very handy and rather quick bowler, which I'm sure our first team captain who was hoping for some time in the middle was not exactly thrilled about, especially after the first ball reared and hit him on the shoulder. 

Luckily at the other end, one of our former players was serving up twelve ball overs by somehow bowling more wides and no balls than even I could ever manage, and the ones that were vaguely straight were being hammered to the boundary by our second team captain.

The first wicket fell when the first team captain jammed one out to cover, before my Sunday co-captain came on to strike a couple of lusty blows before getting out to someone who looked like they'd never bowled before in their lives. 

There were worries of an embarassing collapse drifting in on the freshening breeze, but we found an unlikely saviour in the form of one of our young lads, who produced a number of hefty thwacks mixed in with some sensible batting. I even scored ten whole runs myself, with couple of boundaries slapped behind square in the manner of a malfunctioning helicopter trying to take off.

We closed on 143, a decent score in the circumstances. They may not have been cricketers, but the standard of fielding and throwing is way higher in baseball than cricket, and it showed. They held their catches, and they all had throwing arms like missile launchers. 

At the tea interval, an opportunity for the baseballers to crack open a few beers, I was told I'd be opening the bowling as "their opening bats are rubbish". Another staggering vote of confidence, but hey, I just love bowling. 

It actually went ok, I castled their opener third ball with an absolute ripper - a straight one that he missed in other words - and took one for four in three overs before being banished as we wanted everyone to get a bowl if possible. It worked too, pretty much everyone took a wicket including our debutant flattening the stumps of the T20 international.

However the baseballers had a very good bat who scored 50 and kept them in the game, but wickets kept falling as the captain skillfully brought himself on to bowl at guys who had never batted before, as well as taking an excellent catch. 

We won the game by seven runs, a really fun afternoon capped off with a couple of beers as the sun sank lower in the sky. 

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 21.05.24