"OMG, WTF happened there?" asked a magpie on the square at Farmborough as the Cowboys drained the barrels from the Ormigrove brewery."I blame the new caps", said a leatherjacket larvae, trying not to become a light supper, safe in the knowledge that fines for such dissent had already been dished out.
"Well", chirped a blackbird, who had witnessed the whole of the afternoon's proceedings from the shade of a boundary chestnut tree, " It went a little something like this."
As a mere formality, the skipper tossed a coin with his opposite number, won again and asked the opposition to bat against his octet of bowlers: A hot afternoon in the field was guaranteed, despite a gusting north-easterly breeze.
RT1 and Garnier bowled with customary theodolite-accuracy, beating the bat on numerous occasions and limiting the batsmen to only a couple of runs an over, accumulated as the ball flew from edges across the fast outfield. Both eventually took out an opening batsman towards the end of their tidy spells to have the Fosse on around 50-2.
The Landlord further contained the incoming batsman and after many vociferous interrogations of the umpire removed one LBW, then clipped the top of another's off stump. Nice. SteveO swung his jazz from the other end but was wicketless and the No.3 batsman, who'd been let off the hook when a catch went down, soon commenced to make midsummer hay.
It wasn't to be MattD's day with the ball, nor Lalith's, as the batsmen found the boundary with regularity after drinks, accelerating the run rate, building on modest beginnings and pushing the total beyond that which had earlier been thought likely: This was the team after all that had been dismissed by Bath for 46, albeit now bolstered by a new No.3 batsman who had just scored a fifty.
Iggy then had a go, but it was wizard Wilko, the last of the octet, who eventually removed both batsmen with Preash taking a smart second catch behind the stumps. The opposition batted out the remaining overs of their innings without loss to end on 205-6.
Tea comprised more baguettes than there are in a Parisian boulangerie, but the entente cordiale was maintained by scones, cream and jam and the Rapid Tea Response Squad stood down.
If the skipper had been somewhat spoilt for choice with his bowling octopus, the batting looked like plankton, if not on paper then in the deep water that the Cowboys found themselves in a few overs later. Grove clung to the liferaft as his partners disappeared, prey to a fine spell of quick swing bowling that found edges and stumps, leaving the surface of the water littered with ducks. The score was barely in double figures with four wickets down.
Operating with a somewhat inverted batting order, all was not lost as there was better batting to come. Grover's resilience and MattD's purposeful belief moved the score along, but after the opening bowler's 4-17 the slower replacement bowling was almost as hard to get away. After playing well along the ground, occupying the crease and reaching double figures, Grover hit one in the air back to the bowler. Lalith didn't malinger, but in his eagerness holed out too soon.
With six wickets down and a steep hill to climb, MattD, who'd cracked some welcome boundaries, was joined at the wicket by Iggy; the pair of them still capable of stealing victory, the latter exhibiting immediate intent with a powerful straight boundary. It was uncanny that after his departure last week, we'd assumed that J.Burgess was a thousand miles away by now, only for his namesake to be bowling for the opposition, not to mention another Wilko at the other end. Perhaps it was these coincidences that Iggy was dwelling upon, with his head down, when JB2 came in to bowl, startling him when he wasn't expecting the delivery, too late to pull out of committing to play a stroke to the ball that bowled him.
SteveO tried to hang on but was bowled for the fourth of five ducks to waddle across the Cowboys' scorebook. Preash's spirited and capable resistance produced his first boundary for the team, followed by two much better ones, but when MattD was bowled for a Man of the Match winning 39, with the total struggling to reach three figures, the game was up. Cider Moments were hard to come by and even harder to remember after drowning sorrows later. No.11 RT1 should be congratulated on surviving more balls than seven of his teammates, on his way to his duck. Preash did his average no harm, remaining not out on 16: All out for 110 in the 36th over.
"I don't believe you," said the magpie.
Scorecard
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