Farmborough frittata

It was clear fresh and bright at Farmborough when the Cowboys convened to play against Midsomer Norton, although the same adjectives could not perhaps be attributed to all players in the home team.

Skipper Iggy won the toss for the fourth time in succession and gave the new ball to Budge and Garnier who both pegged the openers down with a tidy line and length, initially restricting the opposition to a paltry two runs an over. Around the time that Budge started misfiring occasional beamers, one of the batsmen (conveniently) developed an at-the-time unspecified problem and retired from the field, bringing a younger stylish bat to the crease.

As the score snailed along, a large mirror appeared from the clubhouse and was placed on a chair by the boundary. Was this an attempt to dazzle the fielding side with reflected sunlight? A signal to reinforcements in the hills? An opposition narcissist? The real reason revealed itself to be the solution to a problem the retiring batsman had had with a contact lens.

The Landlord and Lalith replaced Budge and Garnier but although they too kept the runs to a trickle and forced a couple of chances that went to ground, no wicket was forthcoming. 'Boring,' shouted Garnier, a man who in averting an accident recently, found himself horizontal in front of a moving car and for whom the arrival of an extraterrestrial test team would now barely merit a raised eyebrow.

At the drinks interval the opposition were around fifty without loss, but soon after the resumption MattD removed the obstinate opener and the previously retired one returned. The odd loose ball was put away and the score advanced slowly, until just before the hundred came up Matt hit the stumps again. A few overs later he bowled the new batsman to claim his third victim and Midsomer Norton were 116-3.

Ev and Dunc tried their arm but were met with a determined effort to raise the run rate in the remaining overs as the batsmen found the boundary with increased frequency. Garnier was prescribed the ball again to counter his attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, forcing the opening bat, who by now had reached his half-century, into a mistimed drive that swirled into the covers for the Landlord to pouch.

Late in the innings, making his debut for the Cowboys, Sean was given the ball and promptly bowled the batsman with his first delivery, thereby ensuring that there was at least one, if only one, potential Cider Moment for which to vote later on. Garnier then bowled the opposition skipper's son, who'd aggressively forced the score up to 165-6 and by the end of the 40th over the total had reached 173.

It's not often that one has to resort to Wikipedia to explain the tea, but ...   
"The Italian word frittata derives from fritta, the feminine past participle of "to fry" (friggere) and was originally a general term for cooking eggs in a skillet, anywhere on the spectrum from fried egg, through conventional omelette, to an Italian version of the Spanish tortilla de patatas, made with fried potato."

What Wikipedia fails to mention is that the making of a frittata absolves the creator from having to take any wickets or score more than one run. Armed with this knowledge (along with many plaudits for a fine tea) Ev strode out to the wicket to open with Grove, returning very soon to do the washing-up: 2-1.

Inspired captaincy saw Budge coming in at number three, where he immediately appeared at home, striking the ball cleanly and running well between the wickets, putting on a near half-century partnership before being bowled for 24. Grove's strokeplay ended not long afterwards when he was caught for 15, leaving Sean and Dunc to rebuild. The former mirrored his success with the ball, displaying some exquisite sweeps and square drives that spliced the field, the latter sweeping even finer and matching his partner's accumulation of boundaries.

When Sean was bowled by the opposition skipper's slow guile for 31, the Cowboys were half way to their target on 87-4. Lalith joined Dunc and stood tall to block a few before bending his knees to scoop the ball aerially out of reach of fielders, launching a couple of sixes over mid-on. A few chances went to ground in the deep but the pair stayed together until Lalith holed out for 24 with the score on 132-5.  With Dunc determinedly dug in, Matt came in and hit a dozen runs, including a six, before being bowled and replaced by Iggy with twenty runs required from the last four or five overs.

With the echoes of Iggy's Bath battering five sixes last week still bouncing around the valley, there was little doubt that the Cowboys would make it over the line, although it was Dunc who knocked off the majority of the remainder, ending unbeaten on a Man of the Match winning 46 and batting his team to a four wicket victory.

Scorecard

Home Farm Run Fest

With a waft of weedkiller on the wind and the call of a pheasant from the southern slope of the valley, the Cowboys took to the field at Farmborough for their first home game of the season against Bath 4th XI. It was still cold for May, but mercifully the space between isobars was further apart than in previous weeks and having won the toss, bowling first was the preferred option.

With RT1 absent injured, Budge and the Landlord took the new ball against a solid opening pair, soon discovering that the pitch and batsmen were unforgiving of anything less then a good length and that perhaps Grover had marked the boundary too short. Budge took a while to adjust his radar but when he found the spot and the batsman sliced to gully, Grover stuck his hand up and plucked the ball from the air, in the now familiar manner of an excitable child urgently requesting the toilet.

A couple of overs later, the Landlord delivered a slow yorker that he and the batsman thought was a beamer and duly found himself apologising before the ball had reached its destination, which turned out to be the base of middle stump, much to their mutual surprise and respective jubilation and grief.

The next man in was an experienced old hand, renown for his ability to hit a good ball from outside off stump over square leg: This he then proceeded to do, his partner proving similarly adept at hitting hard and causing the Cowboys to hone their skills of ball retrieval from the undergrowth.

Lalith and SteveO tried their hand at breaking the partnership, but with little swing or turn to be had and the margin for error small, the ball still regularly found the boundary, until not long after a spilled chance at long-on, a mistimed drive off SteveO dropped short at long-off into the Landlord's hands: 116-3.

Lalith then settled into his spell, making the highly accomplished batsmen work hard, unfortunate to remain wicketless. Ev replaced SteveO but couldn't prevent the run rate from rising to above six a over, the crack of bat on ball mirrored by the sound of shotgun blasts from the top of the hill and as rabbits and pigeons scarpered, Cowboys retreated to the boundary. The partnership grew, Dunc tried his slow-slow-quick-quick-slow routine but couldn't wrong-foot the batters and carrying an injury, Iggy was the last of the bowlers to get mauled for a couple of balls an over, having tied the batsman down for the remainder.

It wasn't until the old hand on weary legs had made a century and his partner had passed fifty that the latter was run out by an impressive direct hit from Grover, who got in on the action again to catch the centurion off Iggy before the innings closed on 289-5.

Tea was a smörgåsbord of love provided by Iggy and Helen and threatened to divert attention from the remainder of the match. Unfortunately, the opposition didn't fall into the trap of consuming so much home-baked bread and cake that they were unable to return to the field and after an indecently short interval the Cowboys set about scoring 7.25 an over to win.

Ev and Ange started off with positive intent and in great style, finding the boundary regularly as the Bath bowlers struggled with the loose ball. Their fifty partnership came up gratifyingly early, evidence for any who might have been in any doubt that there were runs in the pitch. Just before the pair had added a century together at a run a ball Ange was caught for 32.

Bath turned to flighted spin which Ben and Ev treated with respect when due, stroked and smashed when not. Before long they too had added a half century partnership and when Ben was bowled, the score had rattled along to 159-2 with Ev on 88. Without adding to this, the jug evasion panel was convened as Ev attempted a run too risky given the swift accuracy of the fielding side and was forced to curtail his combative and productive occupancy of the crease.

A second run out success for the opposition ended Dunc's stay as a familiar Cowboy wobble ensued: After Grover nearly hit a ball for six he missed another and was bowled and when Lalith became the second in the innings to be bowled by a maiden with the score on 177-6 the outlook wasn't rosy. However, Iggy brought fresh impetus to the attack, batting with a brutal assertiveness that suggested the possibility of scoring the remaining hundred runs by himself, along the way launching five sixes and causing the opposition to doubt their ability to defend the total.

At the other end, Joe fell to another run out, then Preash's defences were breached as the score reached two hundred, but with eight wickets down and the Landlord at the wicket, Iggy still oozed confidence and began bludgeoning the ball harder and further. When his penultimate partner was given out LBW after edging the ball onto his foot, the Cowboys' skipper still looked capable of hitting the remaining seventy runs from the last seven overs. Alas the bubble burst when he was caught just short of a remarkably fast half century and the Cowboys lost by 62 runs.

Ev's opening innings earned him the Man of the Match vote and Grover's outstretched hand won him the Cider Moment. Fines were heavily incurred.
Scorecard

Methodist madness

It's a little known fact that in the North Somerset dialect there are seventeen words for wind, yet none of them can accurately convey the climatic conditions which greeted the Cowboys on their arrival at Norton Hill School for their first outing against Midsomer Norton Methodists, who appeared to have prepared a wicket of moss on the side of a geological fault line.

Before the fun began, in what can only have been an act of sabotage to prevent a challenge to his batting average, Ev ran over Preash's kit in the car park, which happily, like it's owner, showed determined resistance and refused to buckle.

Having successfully tossed a coin and not seen it blown to the next county, the skipper invited The Meths to bat and handed the new cherry to Rich and Rob. Both bowled a tidy line and length, given all the geography going on, with the rain now rudely spitting, making the ball difficult to grip. No mean feat then for Lalith to hold on to a catch off RT1, who round about now had twanged part of his leg mechanism and was unable to complete his excellent spell of 1 for 7. On came Matt to replace him, bowling a menacing and threatening line which the batsmen found equally hard to put away, soon hitting the stumps to take the second wicket.

After eight overs of tight and testing deliveries for no reward, Rich was replaced at the portakabin® end by the Landlord. "Why Mr Landlord, do I not get more wickets?" asked Rich in the pub afterwards, having seen his successor sling down a rank first delivery which the hitherto difficult-to-remove batsman smacked in the vicinity of Ben, who took a superlative low catch. The answer to the question is of course to bowl more shite.

Matt's judicious use of the ridged pitch soon brought him a second wicket, to have the opposition at 41 for 4 and without the score advancing further he hit the stumps yet again, finishing with fine figures of 3 for 9. Before the total had reached fifty the Landlord got in on the act and found the stumps too, but then came some resistance as their skipper dug in, smiting some hefty blows and forging a near fifty run partnership, eventually broken by Ev.

There were missed opportunities aplenty as catches went to ground and fielding went awry, the details of which, and some responsibility for, are best left with the fines' fuhrer. Lalith kept his heed at the bowler's end to secure a run out, thanks in part to their skipper, who he then bowled for 46, before wrapping up the innings in the penultimate over by bowling the number 11: All out for 106.

A generous tea and respite from the gale was taken in a portakabin® classroom and comprised fayre that wouldn't have looked out of place in a televised cake bake-off.

From one perfect sponge to another, Grover and Ev strode out, the former returning one ball later, bowled for an ignominious golden duck. With only three runs on the board Ben was similarly bowled and despite powerfully and purposefully walloping his first ball, Angelo was bowled from the other end before the total had reached double figures. Iggy too took a direct approach, intent on putting away the bad ball, but when a lofted shot held up in the wind and was caught by his opposite number, the Cowboys were a windblasted and desperate 15 for 4.

Matt came out to bat and found the boundary once but added only another dozen runs with Ev before falling victim to the wicket which he'd earlier exploited so well with the ball. Lalith started cautiously, building a vital partnership to rescue some semblance of respectability and as the ball was given more air and he hit out, he was fortunate to be dropped at long-off. Far from dulling his resolve, an identical shot was played a short while later, which this time was competently caught.

Preash entered the scene with the score on 47 for 6 and set about rebuilding the mess with Ev, who by now was exhibiting some stylish strokeplay on the tricky sticky wicket. The newcomer blocked well and intelligently farmed the strike to his partner, despite the previous motorised assault on his baggage. The partnership crept along and the score advanced, aided at times by a little wayward bowling and nervous fielding in response to the growing Cowboy authority as the required total began to appear attainable.

Shortly after the pair had made a consummate fifty partnership the hundred came up, but just before Ev was able to complete a half century of his own, he was caught for a solid 46 which was later to earn him the Man of the Match vote. The remaining half a dozen runs were a formality, which the Landlord contributed nothing to, bowled as he was by a low straight one for a duck and it was left to Garner to finish things off with the immovable Preash, who for the second week remained not out on eleven.

Under an improbable rainbow back at the main Midsomer Norton ground, Ben's catch was voted as the Cider Moment and the proceeds from the multifarious fines were donated to his forthcoming marathon running attempt in Edinburgh in aid of Parkinson's UK.

Scorecard

Ill wind

Trying to bowl at Nailsea on Saturday was like throwing a wiff waff ball at a coconut in a hurricane. Which is why I doff my woolly hat to Messrs Burgess, Tinkler, Kumara, Wilkinson and Gibbons for keeping the ball in tight corridors and restricting Nailsea to a fairly paltry and gettable total.

The Cowboys lost here in the final over last year as a cold wind blasted, many small children ran around shrieking and footballers swore behind the beech hedge. Plus ca change.

On paper, the Cowboys looked invincible. Sadly, the paper was caught by a gust of wind and blown down the Severn estuary. And it had all started so well, with Iggy winning the toss and asking the opposition to bat on a slightly damp but fast-drying wicket.

Mister Burgess from the church end and Mister Tinkler from the other opened up the assault with the new ball, which they delivered accurately and beguilingly, despite a stiff breeze in an exposed field, the aspect of which is surely ripe for the erection of several wind turbines capable of supplying electricity to the whole of Bristol.

The ball did have an alarming tendency to fly swiftly from edges to the boundary line, but Joe and Rob kept the runs down and the pressure on, forcing both openers into errors that cost them their wicket. Your correspondent was then given the ball, which he controlled with the dexterity of an inebriated driver in a multi-storey car park, much to the Nailsea batsmen's glee and profit. Did I mention the wind?

Lalith and Mark then showed how it was done, with spells of brave and tight bowling, more than ably assisted by debutant Preash who bagged a couple of stumpings as the Cowboys fought to regain control. Ev came on to bowl at some children who bravely hit back a bit before being dismissed. Somewhere along the way a ball got launched into the airspace above Ben's head and he was blinded by the light - revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night - and forced to take protective action as the ball plummeted to earth a few feet away. How we laughed.  Iggy, having pulled a muscle to ensure his position at slip, held two sharp chances but was unable to bowl, so to limit the opposition to 159 all out on the penultimate ball of the innings, with Ev taking a tidy 4-17 was a par performance. Could we sink the birdie?

Not on a tea of persil-white bread and sugar. Haven't they heard of wholegrains here? At least it wasn't windy inside.

Dave and Ev opened the batting needing four an over. The latter returned in the second, caught behind playing horizontally, leaving Ben to build a partnership which crept up to two an over before Dave was also caught by the keeper. Duncan helped move the score along, Ben timed the ball sweetly for boundaries, then Duncan was caught for a dozen and Mark joined Ben, who was bowled in the 21st over for 29. The Cowboys were 62 for 4, still needing another hundred runs. Lalith arrived at the wicket only to lose Mark the following over, bringing Preash to the crease, who proved a steadying anchorman as Lalith played his shots and sometimes found both ball and boundary.

With the required run rate nearly in sight, Lalith fell to another catch and your correspondent joined Preash, successfuly middling a few before feathering a tickle to the keeper as the ball drifted away. Have I mentioned the wind? Joe stuck around much longer, building what was to be the highest partnership of the innings with Preash, keeping the target in sight and making it look possible. When he fell for a spirited 27 the injured skipper came to the wicket with a runner in tow and possible hilarity ensued. None of us were laughing when he returned after pulling his first ball straight into mid-wicket's hands. RT1 strode confidently out to face the hat-trick ball, the Cowboys still requiring 29 from the last five overs with the last pair at the wicket..

Despite making Nailsea work hard, running and striking with intent and coming close to a remarkable recovery, the Cowboys fell just a dozen runs short with a couple of overs remaining when Rob was bowled for legs eleven, stalwart Preash not out on the same score.

The Man of the Match vote went to Joe and the Cider Moment was shared between Joe palming a ball from his face, Ben's "invisible ball trick" and Iggys two slip catches.

Scorecard

 Photo courtesy E.G.