Yeah, About that Last Game Thing...

I had a late call up into our Sunday side today to play Oxton, which meant I had to be a bit brave and get a lift with the family of our opening bowler.

Masked up, and with the windows open, we looked like Dillinger and his chums off to raid a bank in 1930s Chicago, although he went around with violin cases with machine guns in, rather than cricket bags full of mouldering kit - I had to rescue mine from the laundry basket.

Oxton is one of the prettier grounds we play at; it's surrounded by fields full of sheep, has keening buzzards circling overhead and was periodically raided by low level high speed swallows. However, the wicket is like a strip of rolled plasticine and barely bounces more than ankle high.

They are a very good Sunday side to boot, and an unusual one in being much better than their Saturday outfit, with guest players from Gedling Colliery firsts and seconds up in divisions A and C.

I.E rather better than our motley little band, which had been made worse by me being substituted in for a decent all rounder. Not a fair swap.

We batted first, and after a very bright start we totally failed to come to terms with the slow, tacky pitch, lobbing up catch after catch to leave us 30 for 5.

However, thanks to a couple of our senior players who put on a partnership of about 60 against accurate bowling with a very high standard wicket keeper, we clawed our way back into the game. I got to bat, at 11 of course, and somehow managed to score 7 runs off this Division A bowler. No wonder he seemed pretty quick to me even on that moribund wicket.

We closed on 129 for 9 off 40 overs, so we were at least in the game.

I opened the bowling again, and frankly I reverted to being terrible, kicking off with three howlingly huge wides. I just don't know where they came from, I wasn't doing anything any different from yesterday. But my first legal delivery took the edge of the opener's bat, and he was caught behind.

Apparently that was the result of a cunning plan. I apologised to the batsman as he walked off.

I did get better after that, but not by much. I realised the only way to straighten up was to really put maximum effort into every delivery to make sure I was completing my action. This sort of worked, but it meant I banged the odd one in short.

One such delivery pitched halfway down, and travelled towards the batsman about 4 inches off the ground, at which point it went under his bat and hit the stumps.

Now, double bouncing deliveries are no-balls. However, there now followed a long argument about whether the rule means bouncing twice before the batsman, or twice before the stumps.

It was ruled, correctly, the former, but not until a lot of arguing between the square leg umpire who hadn't been looking, the main umpire who had, and the batsman who was, to say the least, very put out, shouting repeatedly that the ball had bounced twice. Eventually the umpire more or less sent him off, and off her stomped, mumbling loudly all the way.

"Here mate, don't forget your dummy!" called our slip fielder, possibly unhelpfully.

I did what I do best, stood there and looked bemused and incompetent.

Anyway, I was raken off when I dropped a couple short in my 5th over that got spanked by the Division C batsman, who was now joined by the Division A bat, at which point I should add that I've been asked to point out by the powers that be that sending in top division players to play against much lower division ones is not in the bally spirit of the game, what ho.

Spirit or not, they proceeded to thrash the ball everywhere in such a way as to make my bowling look like James Anderson. When I went off, they were 30 for 1 off 10 overs. They then proceeded to hit the 100 more they needed off about the next 12.

I dropped a fairly straightforward catch of the third team captain, who probably wished he hadn't asked me to play. That said, I had to umpire at square leg in the cold while he slept under a blanket. So my sympathy is tempered.

It occurs to me I've been going on about what a terrible and worthless bowler I am, but looking at the stats, I'm the club's second leading wicket taker with 9 at 18.89. So I must have done some good bowling somewhere along the line.

Maybe I forgot it.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 30.08.20

So Near yet so Fart

Well, as expected, today was a murderously hot day to be playing cricket in, but off we went to face Oxton Toads - yes seriously - up at their beautiful ground near Southwell.

Although as the pub in the village is called The Green Dragon, it might as well be near Hobbiton.

Our skipper won and the toss and we batted, which was good for him as we would have hit him if we'd had to bowl. It was such a turgid slow wicket, and long grassy outfield, that scoring was very difficult, and only our opening bat, on leave from a first team that are busy drinking themselves to death on a stag do in Hamburg, really got to grips with it in making 60.

Other folk stuck around with him, but boundaries were few.

I spent most of the innings downward dogging and cobra-ing on the outfield to try and stretch my back. While the team laughed from the pavilion.

Lots of butterflies were fluttering by; mainly red admirals and painted ladies. As ever keening buzzards were being mobbed by crows.

When I went into bat at number 10, my prior injury made it very hard to get my box on with the swelling, but it didn't bother me as much as I thought. It certainly didn't stop me from hitting two boundaries in a row to end up second top scorer (!) on a mighty 11 not out.

Bowling wise, I opened up when it was still blisteringly hot, and opened up with three terrible wides before settling down to bowl well, and even bowling one of their opening bats with a beauty. I actually bowled well enough by my own low standards, but another dropped catch off my bowling proved costly alas. In 34 degree heat.

The heat meant I was dying after 7 overs, and even if the skipper hadn't taken me off I think I was about ready to collapse. 7 overs 1-13. Luck isn't running for me.

But we had other good bowlers, and we chipped away with good fielding, to reduce Oxton to 83-7 and falling behind the run rate - they too couldn't score and the batsman who was dropped off me was suffering from cramp.

My own issue at this point was that my position was at square leg, and the umpire was being frequently, if quietly, flatulent. It was somewhat distracting.

Anyway, their number 9 bat was one of those annoyingly lucky mega-sloggers, and today was his day. He hit two sixes to win the match, with just two overs to go.

We were so bloody close! So annoying!

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 29.06.19

Up on Swallow Heights

it was our last Sunday game today, and we found ourselves out at Oxton, a ground we played at last year with the world's most ramshackle pavilion that was wetter inside than out in the rain, and sheep baa-ing right up to the boundary edge.

Well this year a new pavilion has appeared, with nice tables and a nice kitchen and dressing rooms you aren't at risk of drowning is, but of course progress means we means a bit of charm.

It's still a sunning setting, above the Tolkien sounding Green Dragon pub, with the constant twitterings of swallows and house martins as they feed up for migration around the ground. THere are trees and open fields, people going for walks, and a dog who decided to field the ball for us and cover the ball with slobber.

Oddly enough our young leggie bowled his best ball of the day after that.

As ever, it was a long old slog in the field, but our heads never dropped. As captain, like I was today, I'm not bad at this aspect of the job, although I'm tactically probably quite hopeless. Our Under 15s had a lot of energy today. Ah, I wish I was young again.

So, they got 290. Ahem.

So we batted, and I did my nature walk. Not much to see, apart from a giant parasol mushroom one of our team insisted I took a look at. It was markedly warmer than yesterday, thank god.

We batted well, for all our 40 overs. One our number, our only senior team player, got 64, and even I hit a boundary in scoring 6. Slightly annoyed by my batting partner running me out trying to give me the strike though. That was my highest score since May.

Great day though, enjoyed myself, and the Oxton chaps said we were a credit to our club. Can't say fairer than that really.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 20.08.17

I Think "Abject" is the Word

Another cricket day today, off to what turned out to be the very affluent looking village of Oxton, a place I've never visited before despite it being close to Southwell, where I went to school.

The ground was in a promising looking location, high up in the village, and with a flock of curious, constantly baa-ing mixed flock of black, and white, sheep, and with a quirkily charming old pavilion where tea was made by pouring twenty bottles of water into a cauldron kept on the go by a scary gas flame. As is the way with any proper olde worlde sports ground, there must be some broken down equipment on display, and in this case it was a rusting yellow heavy roller that looked like it hadn't moved for a very long time.

Like my feet when I'm batting. More of that later.

Like all cricket grounds I've played at this year, the Oxton ground was a playground for swallows and house martins to swoop around, one swallow in particular passing a metre from my face when I was fielding. Pied wagtails were also plentiful, and there seemed to be a constant piping call, reminiscent of a lapwing or oystercatcher, that I couldn't identify the source of.

A kestrel flew overhead. I found an old bird's nest in an outside toilet. More sheep came up to the fence and "baaa-d" at me. But what struck me the most was a mistle thrush, tall and elegant, visiting the ground during a rain break to grab a worm of two.

For rain it did, hard. Once before the match and twice during it, at which point the drawbacks of a charming old quirky pavilion became very apparent; it seemed to be raining harder in the dressing room than outside. Still it did mean we got to have an early tea, always a highlight for me.

In between showers and the odd crack of thunder - one batsman decided his helmet was a bad idea as the lightning got closer - we actually knocked over the Oxton batsman for a mere 44 on a day were the catches stuck and the wicket proved rather a tricky one.

At 20-1 in our reply, hopes were high. Unfortunately the local giant fast bowler had other ideas, and after our skipper fell first ball to the spinner at the other end, he destroyed us with extreme prejudice.

He was simply miles too fast and straight.

I went in at number 8, survived the first ball by some miracle, and then sightless in my helmet and the poor conditions, aimed a panic stricken drive at my second ball and had a lot of my stumps knocked over. Sounded like it anyway, I was too despondent to look.

He took 7-10, and we went down for 25, the lowest score I've ever been involved in. No-one knew what was going on at all, and our spirits sank before we began to smile at ourselves again as the familiar collapse went on. Yet yet bloody yet again.

At least I got to wear my new spikes, they looked good even though they had half the ground attached to them by the end. And my helmet is currently costing £15 per ball I face.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 25.06.16