A match to remember

For anyone who wasn't there, sit right back and listen to the tale of tonight's indoor cricket game. For anyone who was there, sit back and re-live the event.

The story begins with the incomprehensible revelation earlier in the week that our Friday night 6-a-side team, "GGs", had been placed into D-Grade. That's right, a team made up mostly of players from a team which won the top division premiership last season at Weston had been placed in the 3rd of 4 grades at Lyneham. Don't forget that a couple of years ago the team abandoned Lyneham due to continued frustrations over their incompetence in grading teams properly. Well, now we are back, and that same incompetence has this time gone in our favour, rather than against us.

The story continues with a lot of people being unavailable to play, and no one being able to find people to fill in. Xavier and Brad decided that it didn't matter, and it would be an interesting challenge to try to take on a D-Grade team with only 4 players. So they did.



Brad won the toss, elected to field and led his 3 team-mates, Xavier, Andy and Julian into battle. The guys on the other team were sitting around pre-game knocking back beers, raising the GG players' confidence in the possibility of pulling off a victory.

The game began with the non-striking batsman getting very excited about the lack of fielders (and the lack of wicket-keeper - Xavier was fielding at a first slip) and telling his partner to "just run!". So Brad Mankaded him. He gave the guy a mile of time to get back before deciding it was worthwhile breaking the stumps. And after another mile of time, Xavier decided it was worthwhile appealing in order to claim the wicket.

The "just run" strategy stayed in place, and resulted in 9 run-outs throughout the first partnership. The bowlers were all too quick to allow the batters to duck through for quick singles on, and every time the batter missed the ball, Xavier had only to move in, pick the ball up and either break the stumps, or ping it to the bowlers end for Julian to take.

When they weren't being run out, they also weren't scoring many runs, and the first skin made an epic -41.

The second pair were aiming to get the team back into the positives, and got away to a positive start in the first 2 overs, before the run-outs started up again, and dragged them back to near zero. Consecutive balls clean bowled in the final over, and a stumping by Andy off the final (jackpot) ball saw them finish -12.

The last pair were far more skilled (and far less drunk) than the first two, and pushed the total towards positive again, getting above 30 - but were once again let down by the final over. On the last ball Xavier made the comment that he was going for a perfect record of 3 wickets from the 3 jackpot balls, but decided it was no chance when he noticed that the strongest of the batters was on strike (with a score of 27 at that point).

But he pulled off the "hat-trick" anyway when a inside edge, almost off the toe of the bat, ricocheted onto the stumps.

The opposition ended with a team total of -44.

Then the batting began. And it was just as dominant. Xavier and Jules went out first, and had absolutely no problem whatsoever in plundering 87 off the first three overs. Unfortunately, they have now firmly established that, as a partnership, they are cursed with an inability to make a century. On multiple occasions they have found themselves in similar positions only to choke in the final over. Today was no exception.

The chap bowling the final over was good, but with the fielding he had to back him up, shouldn't have been good enough to stop them scoring 13 off an over. All they had to do was poke around to make a safe ton, but Xavier managed to chip a ball into the top net and back to the bowler early in the over and put them under pressure to hit the bigger shots. They finished 95.

Brad and Andy made 93, but there was no choking there - they just never quite kept up the rate after Andy was bowled mid-innings - while looking to play an awkward shot just to hit the ball at a particular fielder (apparenlty at the request of the wicket keeper, who was getting fed up with his team mate by that point).

The team-mate in question was a clown who seemed to be getting more and more drunk as the game went on... even though he didn't have a beer out there with him. He began by trying to field incredibly close to the batsman (inside the red fielding circle) or push in as a second wicket-keeper. To begin with, his team-mates were telling him to move before every ball, and after a while had to actually go and push him into the position he was supposed to be.

Once they got him to stay away from the batter and the keeper, he started wandering across the pitch as the ball was being bowled. Again, he was told to stop at, and then physically forced to.

It got to the point where every single delivery was being held up by this guy, and his own team mates ordered him from the field. Then when he didn't listen, they physically shoved him out the door.

Xavier and Julian went back in to bat as the third pair, which also suffered interruptions by the same guy. This time he was trying to get back onto the court. Every time he was turned away in a two-on-one shoving match at the back of the court, with one person holding the door open while the other barged him back out to the viewing area.

With an over to go, and the 300 team total out of reach, Brad told the batsmen to go for a 300 winning margin instead. Xavier and Jules made 82 the second time around, for a team total of 270, and a winning margin of 314. All with only 4 players.

Julian noted that game had become quite a spectators event. Most of the people waiting around for games to start or finish were over at our court watching the carnage unfold, with one girl off-court apparently even pulling out her mobile phone and taking some footage, or photos of the score, or something.

The outstanding (and record) statistical highlights were Xavier's bowling (3 overs, 10/-45) and Brad's batting (68... which was off only 16 balls faced, and without the jackpot ball).

Counting the standard first 2 overs bowled and first batting innings of each player, we have the extraordinary figures of...
Andy: +36 (25 & 6/-11)
Julian: +52 (51 & 4/-1)
Xavier: +64 (44 & 5/-20)
Brad: +82 (68 & 6/-14)

But as Brad commented after the game.... "knowing Lyneham, they'll probably put us down a grade after this."

(I'll make the full scorecard available for all to see soon)