Feeling the Heat at Wellow Dam

 Sunday saw us take ourselves - an hour and half early in some cases which must be some kind of club record - to Wellow for a game of proper village cricket at their very rustic ground with its portaloo that not even the insanely brave would dare use. 

It's a lovely setting, a wicket barely distinguishable from the rest of the ground that slopes down a hill to a dam that separates the ground from a fishing lake, where bored men waving sticks at the water were taunted by effortlessly skimming swallows feeding their young of the telegraph wires. 

By the time arrived, our team, somehow an eleven, was more or less there, but the opposition weren't. The suspicion was that they were at the pub, and indeed some of them may have been until fifteen minutes before the game began, Their selection policy seemed to involve asking anyone to play who happened to be at the ground, including the grandfather of one of our juniors, but it worked as they managed to get eleven too.

Eleven v eleven games are a rarity on Sundays these days.

Sent in by my co-captain to contest the toss because he keeps losing it, I indeed won and announced we would bat without hesitation. On a very hot day, this is always a no-brainer, but after fifteen minutes, we all wished we hadn't.

The Keele captain was wiped out by a nasty swinging delivery by Wellow's guest Australian player from Sherwood in the Bassetlaw league 3 and thus better than any of us. Our young left hander was then torpedoed by a ball that rolled along the ground. Batting at four, I then survived one ball, before what seemed like a perfectly safe defensive shot was scooped off the ground by the bowler, a 6 foot 6 beanpole who somehow launched himself forward, downwards and sideways to make the catch.

I stood there absolutely stunned. Defeated by a giant ginger salmon, I pronounced myself cursed. Four ducks in a row. 

Luckily, our batting was heavily backloaded, and our big hitters, combined with wiser batting by our resident geographer, took us to what seemed like a highly competitive total of 157 in a thirty over game. I felt somewhat relieved, but not for long. 

Wellow always seem to turn out a couple of very good players among the young lads and beer enjoying social players, and it was the aforementioned affable Australian who put us to the sword straightaway with some mighty hitting, although he was dropped early on. We were playing "retire at 50" in this match, so when he was hooked off when he raised his half century after what seemed to be about fifteen minutes, we felt we were perhaps back in the game.

No. The new batsman at three was just as powerful. 

We did keep nicking wickets at the other end, I myself took two for 23, but we couldn't get the gun batter out, indeed he too got to 50 before retiring. Could this be another chance??? 

No, for two reasons. One, the Wellow captain who had got me out was equally capable of hitting a very long bowl, and two, the venerable geographer had hatched a plan to replace me with himself in order to bowl gentle lollipops for the Wellow captain to hit into the pond in order to get the game over and get us to what was admittedly a very nice pub all the quicker on what was by now a very hot afternoon. 

He was hit for twenty, and the job was done. So we had lost, but it was still an enjoyable afternoon. 

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 25.06.24