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
No comments:
Post a Comment