Unexpected Heroics

 With a lot of players missing for Saturday's game at Upton against Thrumpton 2s, a big decision was to be made.

Who could captain the third team?

Who had the skill, fire, fight and tactical nous to take on the second in the league with a very young team, and get a result?

Er, that would be me. 

Having won the toss against the Thrumpton captain, who bore a resemblance to Dwalin from "The Rings of Power" I put Thrumpton into bat, knowing that bowling first offered our best chance to get as many points out of the game as possible.

Things did not start well against the powerful Thrumpton openers, with our young opening bowlers a little wayward, and they were scoring runs for fun as they have been doing all season. I was a bit at a loss, felt slightly out of control of things in the field, and kept forgetting everyone's names. 

Luckily, I soon settled down, and so did our next pair of bowlers, a very young seamer who has been taking a lot of wickets at junior level, and a guest player from Farndon who bowled some excellent leg spin, and they took three wickets between them. Add to this that there was some superb fielding going on resulting in a few runouts, and we were going well. 

"Everyone is doing fantastic" I would exhort ungrammatically. "Let's bowl them out!"

I even got a wicket myselfm caught at mid on. I actually bowled better than I thought, with figures of 1-23 despite getting a bit of tap from a big lower order hitter who got 41. 

We bowled them out for 160, which I'd take any day of the week. Maximum bowling points obtained. 

I did not anticipate us getting anywhere near, and so sent the opening bats out, one of whom was the guest leg spinner, with an initial target of 90 to get the first batting point. I had to go and umpire, of course. 

From that vantage point I had a great view of our opening bats make a good start against bowling that was a bit less rapid than in our previous game against Thrumpton. A rather massive 6 was hit, and there was a bit of over-excited chirp on the boundary concerning a bit of fielding where one of the Thrumpton chaps trod on the rope while picking the ball up. 

Dwalin the Thrumpton captain told me to get our players to cool it, so I did. 

Sadly we lost one of our openers with the score on about 50, and now things were going to be rather tricky as we had a section of young players in our batting order, so there was a bit of procession at one end.

Meanwhile, the leg spinner, 13 years old, was still out there, and joined by our experienced wicketkeeper began to score runs at a cracking pace. To see such match awareness in a 13 year old was totally new to me. When the keeper was out after having played really well in a supporting roll, he began to farm the strike with another batch of youngsters, while slamming the odd boundary.

Alas he then got a ball that stopped and bounced, and that was it. Game Set and Match.Out for 78.  But we had put up a tremendous fight in a game we had no right to even compete in, and I was very proud of my young side. 

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 27.07.24