Proper Village Green Cricket

 Sunday saw us take a decent Sunday side over to Car Colston, a beautiful and nowadays very rare village green ground, with a pretty pavilion and an excellent pub on the other side of the ground.

As ever the first to arrive, I inspected the wicket to find a moss green mattress, on which I lost the toss and was put into field first.

Nominally, I was captain. However, I had the captains of the firsts, seconds and thirds in the team, and things soon turned into a herding cats exercise. 

We opened the bowling with talented youngsters, but our opponents made a fast start thanks to chonky bats that seemed to consist entirely of edges. We dod get one of the opening bats out, only to then face Flintham's Aussie overseas player, who hit some mighty bombs while I wondered what to do next. 

It wasn't all bad, as to be fair Car Colston had put up a proper village green 11 against us, comprising of a couple of a really good players, with some rustic hitters rounded up from the nearest pub. So it was kind of equal. Ish. 

I bowled a few overs - a rare thing these days - and even took a catch to much sarcastic cheering from my team-mates. Took two wickets, including the guy who made 50, and also a bearded bruiser who hit me into a hedge. 

When we batted, the wicket became rather up and down, and apart from our number 3 who cracked 86, we were always rather behind the 8 ball. Not helped by Car Csolton putting 9 men on the boundary for our gun bat, which just isn't cricket in my view. 

I did get a bat, but having spent the entire innings electronically scoring with a device that made me look like a drone pilot, I had to get ready in a hurry, and ended up facing four deliveries with no box in place. All of which I missed in a sense of self preservation. 

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 13.06.25

Traditional Village Green Cricket

 Today saw us go out to play Car Colston, a ground so pastoral it could bark and round up sheep, for our second last Sunday match of the year. 

I can't say I was feeling massively enthusastic this morning , but having succeeded in getting a lift at the last minute - thanks stepdad! - the really rather beautiful setting, complete with pub beyond the far boundary, lifted the spirits somewhat, as did the totally unexpected decently pleasant weather. 

No doubt fed up with losing the toss every match, the skipper sent his son out to toss with the strict instruction to bat first if he won on pain of eternal torment, and lo and behold it worked. 

It meant that us senior players - excluding myself we had probably our strongest side of the year - could get on with the serious task of sitting our arses on chairs and not having to get changed for hopefully another couple of hours, while our juniors got on with doing the batting. 

WE sent out our young opener alongside our youngest opener, and they made a fine start on a really testing wicket, with a hostile pace bowler making the ball spit nastily and jag around. Scoring runs was difficult, but of course, the young opener was able to, and he nearly made it to his 8th 50 before spooning a leading edge to slip. 

Nonetheless, an opening stand of over 50 represented a really good start. 

The problem was, we had slightly misjudged our batting order by backloading the big hitters, which meant we had too many of the young lads batting together to really hit the accelerator towards the end of the innings. It was still good for the young lads to get used to batting time and building an innings, we could have just done with an adult at the other end. We had the first team captain in the side, left unused in the hutch. 

Although to be fair, he wasn't exactly rocketing off his chair to put himself forward to bat, perhaps because his cricket trousers have two large holes in the knees. I didn't feel like batting either, knowing that the opening fast bowler still had two overs left and in no confidence in my ability having not played in a month.

I think we also thought the the young lads would get out, but they didn't. The skipper's son made an excellent 42, the keeper worked hard for 21. But we needed our power hitters to be out there for more than the two ball "cameo" we had at the end from one of them. 135 off 35 overs never relt like a good enough score. 

It was then tea time, and here my admin really failed badly. Or rather my phone did, setting my new phone up meant I missed the text message offering us tea.This really did not go down well with the senior pros in the team, and they kept reminding me of my ineptitude all afternoon. 

So as well as being a hopeless player, I'm now hopeless at everything else. 

So, tea time with nothing to eat, not that I eat at tea time anyway. It gae me a chance to have a walk out of earshot of my grumbling team-mates, and take in the highly picturesque setting. It is deep into September, but the open setting and large numbers of insects on the wing meant that at last I was able to watch swallows swoop low over the ground, while higher up flocks of house martins twittered while their white rumps glittered in the occasional sun showers. 

The chairman having been successfully annoyed by my nature digression no doubt, I can then move on to our bowling, which was opened by our first team captain, who hasn't bowled in Saturday cricket for years, steaming in like a rutting stag and trying to put the batters in fear of their lives with some classic tennis ball bouncers on the spongey wicket. It worked as well, as he had one of the openers caught just about two handed by the skipper's son. 

I did my best to field at sqaure leg, dreading a hard shot being blasted at me but fielding with good energy and enthusiasm - wearing a fitness band has helped greatly with this although not with anything that might be useful to the team like, I don't know, being any good at the game. 

The wicket never seemed to play up as much for our bowlers as it had Car Colston's, and we couldn't take wickets often enough to put any real pressure on the opposition. The chairman bowled well without luck, the skipper's son bowled well to take a wicket first ball but nothing else, and I came on to bowl an over of painful utter rubbish, my arm not coming over properly and my ankle swelling while I bowled. 

I haven't bowled for about 5 weeks to be fair, but it's just physically becoming impossible now, which is making me rather sad. I made the throat sltting sign after just that one over.

We did take a couple of late wickets through some deviously cunning off spin deployment, but all anyone was thinking about now was getting to the pub for roast potatoes. 

Which after we lost, we did and very nice they were too. Feel very fat tonight. 

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 11.09.22

Two Wheels not Two Legs

Two Wheels Good, Two Legs Bad.

The Animal Farm version of today.

So, Wednesday's exercise consisted of me riding the route of the charity bike ride I arranged for work last year, around the local South Notts villages of Cotham, Sibthorpe, Hawksworth, Scarrington, Car Colston, Screveton and FLintham before making a fast (ha ha) ride home.

Just like the charity ride last year, it was a rotten headwind all the way out, to the extent that my second 20km home was twice as fast as the outward bound journey. It was good to get a long 40km ride in however, to try and get the calories burning and the legs spinning in time for the dread winter commute.

I also saw some autumn cyclamen, Which I've been hoping to come across for a while. It wasn't really a sightseeing day however, it was just a little grey and gloomy, and I could see distant rainclouds I didn't want to get caught in. Metaphor for life! I stopped for the churches, for they had flowers growing and in Scarrington's case Cockerel's strutting, and the Screveton giants are always worth a viewing, especially as swallows and house martins feed themselves up around them.

Next day or two, they are gone for warmer climes, as I wish I could be.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 20.09.17

Disaster Avoided on my Charity Ride!

I've had another busy day today. I must really love punishing myself with these weekend 9am starts.

I've been organising a charity bike ride with my work, and today was the day of truth. I was really nervous that my volunteer marshalls and first aiders, as well as any riders, would not show up, but as it turned out, there were already folk waiting for me at Rumbles cafe when it arrived, and after a long nervous wait, lots of very properly dressed cyclists on very expensive bikes began to appear.

I say lots, there were 17 of us in the end, plus our excellent support teams. Which was 17 more than I was expecting. All of whom had bikes way more expensive than my £40 rattletrap, there were some carbon fibre sportive bikes with a value in the thousands.

I've never been very confident of my abilities in running events, but as it turned out everything went find and we had a really good day. I was half expecting us to be mown down by a drunken tractor driver or navigate over a cliff edge, but as it turned out, we all got round with only a couple of small navigation errors.

Apart from the two guys on racing bikes who disappeared and were never seen again. We won't mention them.

I was a very good boy, and helped our slowest group find their way home and nurse a very plucky Polish girl who was riding a ladies town bike that weighed about 15 tons with a seat set far too low and a basket acting like a break when she rode into the wind. I wouldn't have ridden to the corner shop on it, let alone a 40km event, so she was brilliant. It was great how everyone waited for her to finish.

Everyone seemed to be very happy with how the event was run, and want me to do it again with a big BBQ thrown in at the finish.

I am sighing with relief tonight.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 25.09.16