Saturday 30 June 2012

Repetitive rain injury



Another photo of a field where a cricket match didn't take place: A twenty minute downpour on arrival at the ground put an end to any possibility of playing. Happily, after sitting around drinking ale, both out in the sticks and back at inner city HQ, a knockabout game with a tennis ball was convened, including a four year old and a keen and talented passing teenager, whose phone number was obtained.

Saturday 23 June 2012

Three quarters of a loss (The Great Escape)



The advancing blue splodge of the Met Office's rainfall radar didn't bode well. Nonetheless, for the first time in too many weeks we were finally en route to play cricket among the Mendip Hills. More irritating than the meteorological forecast was the voice, if indeed it can be called such, of Kelly Jones of the Stereophonics, bawling along to some horrendous dirge on the radio. Still, given the option of walking out of the city to a more interesting soundtrack or getting a lift in a car tuned to a dodgy radio station, the latter was marginally more appealing. Until that is, UB40 came on, at which time an evaluation was made of the likely chance of surviving baling out of a car doing 50 mph: Tucking and rolling probably wasn't going to help the avoidance of serious injury and despite the lush midsummer verges, landing was going to be hard. On balance, just this once, it seemed better to set aside musical snobbery, weeks in hospital or possible death and stay seated.

"Time flies so don't delay" reads the inscription on the village clock tower, not that a cricketer in the afternoon of his career with one eye on the forecast needs reminding. The cats and dogs were due to start arriving vertically just after tea and as usual, the best plan would be to bowl first and then attack the target second with a swift run rate. This occurred to the opposition too, who on winning the toss did exactly that.

The bowling didn't look too hostile nor the pitch too treacherous, yet our openers made a slow start and spluttered in a rather shameful run out. In his defence, the surviving culprit was wearing boots that were less than an hour out of the shop, whose pristine spikes may have bored down through the Mendip clay and anchored him to the bedrock beneath.

The skipper went in next, stale from a night in Wales without sleep and proceeded to prove, with solidity and style, that shut-eye can be a bit overrated. Alas his partners came and went, unable to get to grips with the strip of porridge in front of them and paying too much or not enough respect to the ball. The big hitters hit, once or twice, then got stung, over ambitiously attempting repeats. After a customary questionable LBW decision I found myself walking out to the middle and exchanging a disappointed shrug with the outgoing batsman before taking guard and surveying the divoted mess before me.

The first few balls seemed to be aimed at imaginary stumps on another wicket even though only one was called as a wide. Someone was saying something about the wind and the wicket keeper was congratulating me on choosing the right ball to leave. Shortly afterwards the bowler from the other end fell over in his follow through and gouged a crater just outside the line of leg stump. It was this crater, the wind and my ineptitude that contrived to have me bowled behind my legs a few over later, the whispered removal of the leg bail as deathly final as a clattered or cartwheeled stump.

The remainder of the tail helped the skipper to tip the score past a hundred, including a spirited superlative six over long on and several exquisite boundaries that nearly atoned for a couple of messy run outs, one of which involved the skipper depriving himself of a half century in the final over.

Tea was taken as the skies darkened. Some searched for signals on mobiles, others for sandwiches without flesh. Set just under three an over to win, the home side wore the broadest smiles, the advancing precipitation mixing a note of urgency with their confidence to produce a cacophony of runs in the opening overs as our opening bowlers were dispatched, laterally and aerially to the boundary. Like a snail clinging to the underside of a leaf and witnessing a family member crushed by a gardener's boot, I waited my turn.

I didn't have to wait long, as the left and right-handed opening batsmen progressed at over six an over and the skipper sought to try something, anything, else. The ball, a cheap one, was mud spattered and neither red, nor pink nor carmine, perhaps vermillion. Perception becomes heightened as you anticipate calamity. Focus too.

The left-hander swiped and missed at a few, connected with others, blocked the yorker, found the boundary with one or two and half of my hand with another: If you bowl stump to stump you can expect one to come back your way every now and then, yet the velocity, fading light and tardy neurones prevented the fingers from closing and the ball from sticking. To much relief, the batsman holed out to mid-wicket in my next over, just short of a fifty.

By now it had started to rain, the ball needed frequent wiping with a cloth and the bowling crease was potentially slippery. Despite having pegged them back a bit from my end, my friend's usually deadly leg spin was getting hit and the opposition seemed capable of overhauling our total quite easily, but they hadn't yet faced the necessary twenty overs to win a rain abandoned match on a superior run rate. When the rain intensified and persisted, there was no option but to leave the field and when a storm drain overflowed ten minutes later and flooded the outfield, the match was abandoned.

(Damp) Scorecard

Friday 8 June 2012

Eels and whales

Tomorrow's match was called off late this afternoon. It's quite possible that eels have returned to the outfield, if not several blue whales.

Sunday 3 June 2012

Prey

Now unbeaten after the first four Saturday afternoon league matches and getting familiar with the team's new home: The slope, tree and relatively small boundary all favour batsmen although the wicket can produce both low bounce and high ping. Losing the toss again we were put into bat, but the top order played solidly and kept me busy with the scorebook. A six landed on the roof above our heads.

A flurry of wickets caused the abandonment of the scorebook in search of pads with which to face a hat-trick ball. Examined under a microscope, it was blocked. Shortly afterwards a stupid probing drive found an edge but luckily it plopped into space and enabled a single. Then a cut four to the short boundary but after a change in bowling, with my foot so far down the wicket it was nearly in the next field, my extended front leg met a full ball from a floated spinner and the umpire - a team mate - extended his finger in judgement. Later, he would explain the decision, without invitation, leaving me in doubt, with a new theory that his previous almost half century had made him over confident.

Failing to bat out all the overs is a bit naughty, but another LBW decision (which looked out from the boundary but was again debated by the batsman) led to an early demise of our innings, short of the double century we'd hoped for. As we left the field, a missing member of the opposition team arrived.

The tea had been driven to the match on the seat behind me as the driver struggled to extricate us from the city through traffic jams and navigational errors. It still tasted fine, although with running and jumping to do, it was best not to scoff too much.

Our opening bowlers tested the batsmen, despite a rather grubby ball and the best of the afternoon's humidity gone. The almost-half-centurion received a nasty crack on the knee. The score progressed to the doorstep of concern before our bowlers hit the stumps for the first of six times. In between the score appeared to race, stagnate, escape, proceed and fall. The number three batsmen had about him the air of a tail-ender, swinging and a missing many times, connecting twice to reach the boundary before the first change bowler up the hill cleaned him up.

Running in down the hill, the sweet spot found last week, where the ball popped to an awkward height, was elusive. By now it was evident that our opposition were a team of hitters and buoyed up by having a five-fer under his belt, the No.4 batsman was intent on making early summer hay.

There was some bad fielding; dropped catches that bred disappointment and anxiety and some brilliant fielding; the hyper-extended arm of the man of the match plucking a blinder at backward point astonished all. Pretending to hover like a buzzard over a field mouse got me a run out, but the yorkers down the hill sometimes came out as low full tosses and got punished. One got through, played on or off the pads: Bails off. Nice. Soon after I got rested, to come back on at 'the death': It's up there with being night watchman; an awkward job, but someone's got to do it and if they pick you, they probably think you've got half a chance.

The game was nicely balanced, for a spectator, but with the light fading and a few light spots of rain arriving, nobody on either side felt particularly settled. The skipper bowled down the hill, went for a few runs, then hit the stumps. Same happened at the other end, the run rate just getting away from the batting side, despite the soapy ball far too often failing to find a safe pair of hands in the field.

It's probably best not to shout, as the ball arcs in the murky sky, "Surely this time." It didn't work and on dropping it, the fielder, one of the more enthusiastic and the most economical bowler, was perhaps best left to battle his demons alone.

"If we lose this, it'll be because we haven't put everyone back on the boundary", someone said to me between overs. "We can give them a run a ball."

"Actually, you'll have to come back on up the hill", the skipper apologised, "I've miscalculated."

The demons had by now apparently convinced the aforementioned fielder to believe that he perhaps wasn't a boundary fielder after all and with this new found half knowledge, he spilled another one. I'm equally culpable for not discussing swapping the fielder in one of the most crucial fielding positions for a right arm over. The drizzle, wet ball and uphill task had distracted me.

Still, nil panic. "It ain't getting away from us. Bowl straight. Oh crikey" clamour the voices inside, as two fielders let a ball reach a hedge before and between them. Somehow, one over goes for three fours, which is almost as many as eight went for last week, but then the skipper strikes again from the top end, bowling the danger man.

I hadn't remembered the bloke who turned up at the close of our innings and didn't realise that he wouldn't be batting, so when I bowled a straight one that was lofted high towards long on at the bottom of the field and expertly and mercifully pouched, the words, "It's all over" didn't fully register.

Scoreboard



Post match refreshment arrangements. Unfortunately, the opposition didn't drink biiter.