Match Report - 2xi vs Staines and Laleham

S&L Won the toss. ATS
HWRCC 181-7 from 47 Golby 46
S&L 138-8 from 44
On play cricket it gives a highlight as "4 overs deducted for rain" which is, like the Latvian Police, harsh... etc

Cole, Hibberd, Fudge, Golbee (Edmund Blackadder: Good. So we're well on the way, then. " `a'; impersonal pronoun; doesn't really mean anything." Right! Next: `A'... `A-golBy'.(Baldrick and Prince ponder over this) Baldrick: Well, it's a buzzing thing, isn't it. "A buzzing thing." Blackadder: Baldrick, I mean something that starts with `A-golB'. Baldrick: Honey? Honey starts with a a golbee. Prince George: He's right, you know, Blackadder. Honey does start a golbee...and a flower, too. Blackadder: Yes, look, this really isn't getting anywhere. And besides, I've left out `aardvark'.), Wright, Clark, Powell, Kennedy, Donnelly, Robinson, Lown.

As we slowly descend the table, like a hot meal in a dumb waiter, losing heat and gently congealing, other teams must be sniggering at our unbeaten record. One of only two unbeaten teams this season, we are left to reflect on substandard performances in the field and dogged oppo rearguards. What if?

There are a number of possible extrapolations we can make or perhaps we can treat this whole paragraph as the interplay of a number of syllogisms (for those of you who have already lost the plot, Wickman sympathises, head for the bit about tea and then the final paragraph).

1. We are the best team in the league, but we have yet to beat the four teams above us who we have not played. They will be defeated with the minimum of fuss. This will put us back up top while other teams similarly fail to despatch weaker opposition as we have failed to do four times out of six.
2. We only had four winning draws over the entire season last year. This year we have had four so we will now win every game we play from here on in except for the games that are abandoned. This will put us top.
3. We are as good as we think we are but we need to win some sodding tosses. If we don’t it’s a mid table finish for us and no mistake. If we win tosses, we will be top.
4. We aren’t as good as we think we are. We won’t finish top.

There’s a play called Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. It’s by a chap called Tom Stoppard who most English professors at even red brick universities would only expect to encounter on the bottom of their shoes and scrape off with a lollipop stick. Probably one of those ones with a lame joke on that you can only get the answer to by sucking off a bunch of frozen concentrated orange juice, running the risk of having your tongue rasped and then a hideous “someone just ran their nails down a blackboard” moment before having to dodge a bunch of wasps to put the wrapper in a bin. If you have kids you then have to lick a paper napkin (running the same risk as the lollipop stick for the same tongue rasp) to wipe the comedy orange moustache off their little cherubic gobs.

Anyway. It’s the sort of play that English Profs don’t like. The only people that laugh at the jokes are the kind of people who have read Hamlet for fun (as opposed to having had to read it at A Level). And there are lots of other people who go to the theatre a lot who laugh at it too. That’s because they have learned to interpret from the actors when to laugh. They have no idea what’s going on and don’t have a clue what the jokes are about. But they laugh right up until the interval when they get nervous looking for their pre-ordered interval gin and tonics which are being supped by some student interlopers.

What happens in the first Act is that R & G are playing a game where on 92 consecutive occasions they flip a coin and it comes down “Heads”. This means that one of R &G (who cares) is 92 coins up and the other (zzzzzzz get on with it Wickman) is 92 coins down. The playwright (why wright – surely it should be write – who makes this shit up???) is establishing in the minds of the characters and the audience that the normal probabilities are not operating etc etc etc.

Which is where we start the report. Fudgey has now lost six tosses in a row. It doesn’t matter whether he calls it or tosses it, either way we’re batting unless we are playing Merrow. The final two thirds of the season will reveal to us whether its 1, 2, 3 or, God forbid, the unbearable 4 that is the actual truth. Right now Wickman is hanging on to 3 by his dirty fingernails, massaging his painful thighs and bruised palms and trying to not wish away five more days of his life in pursuit of another Saturday winning feeling because this drawing thing is turning into a nasty habit.

The cricket (unlike this match report)was actually quite bearable once the oppo had turned up, gone home and picked up the match balls they needed and a couple of pairs of bails and started late. Their ground is fabulous if you look at the outfield and don’t lift your eyes. The wicket looked okay from the boundary, but was rubbish close up. There is more bounce in Keira Knightly’s brassiere. For the nervous amongst us there were real archers firing real arrows at targets just beyond the boundary.

The toss lost, the Wick tried to come to terms with the conditions but were soon in some trouble and behind the rate with Hibberd and Fudge back in the hutch, the one castled the other triggered. 180 runs looked like a brilliant score at that stage. Cole and Golby reassembled the innings from approximately 40-2 off 20 to 100-3 off thirty something, Cole circumspect but eventually aggressive, Golby doing as Golby does, mostly slapping because you couldn’t cut a pat of warm butter with a razor blade on this deck. Wright supported Golby until both were out in relatively short order not before Wrighty had become mortal in the Yes, NOOOO, Yes, fcuk, okay err… department wiping out any talk of AJ’s calling earlier in the season.

Clark and Powell capitalised on the rebuilding work by smashing a forty run partnership from 30 balls to turn the game well and truly in the Wick’s favour towards the end. Powelly cleared a pretty massive straight boundary for the only six of our innings. This was a good team batting performance on a really bad surface to leave us 181 for 7 from 47. At tea the oppo skipper surely had to fancy the chase, at home, and with only the bare minimum of runs on the scoreboard.

For the oppo the opening bowlers exploited their own deck with some skills early on – the first twenty were so miserly that Ebenezer Scrooge would have doffed his cap at them – and were well on top. The fielding performance was fantastic until, perhaps, the sun sapped energy from weary limbs. S&L were also so quiet in the field that one suspected they were almost as dead as their dead dead deck.

Tea was being called all sorts of things early on. Hibby said it was a nine. And it looked like a nine. When viewed from afar it looked spectacular with most the bases covered – melon, variety etc. Up close and personal the mugs were too small and the bread wasn’t fresh. We’ve talked about this before. With Ripley (quite literally) fresh in our minds this was just not up to the same standards. It was a seven and a half and that, simply is that. There is no excuse for stale bread.

When we bowled we were again in the driving seat early on. A great opening spell from Tammy Z reduced the oppo to three down for not very many. Oh and there was the most phenomenal “I’m going to throw the stumps down from cover” run out from Fudgey which would have been astonishing in an international never mind on an ugly suburban club cricket field. Only the number three stuck around. He blossomed from a gritty “all his runs have come through the slips” to a good full on aggressive knock with rivalled Golby or Coley’s knock of earlier. Along with a Saffa leftie who timed it better than anyone else all day and welted the ball all over the park he dragged S&L back into the game to the point where they “only” needed about 3.75 an over for the last 20. It wasn’t risk free beautiful batting but it was mighty effective.

Then the rain came. As it began to rain both bats became distracted the one perishing (somehow), the leftie stumped down the leg side by an ecstatic Clark. Suddenly the game was back in the Wick’s hands. But the rain turned into a deluge as chaos rained. The umpire took us off. S&L sat on their arses and then came up with the worst Captain Mainwairing / Corporal Jones putting on of the covers that Wickman has ever seen. Eventually it stopped and we pushed the covers off and got back on.

Four overs were lost and the game had changed irrevocably. It was not the missing overs that counted. It was the wet outfield. The shine disappeared the first time the ball got off the square. Along with it went Duncan’s chances of influencing a game he was swinging in the Wicks’ favour and Coley’s ability to grip the ball and spin it. We were not potent from then on (although we still dropped catches and the match).

S&L batted out a creditable draw categorised by one of their bats who said “you have to take the runs when they are there”. They almost picked up a second batting point which would have been just reward. It was creditable because until they were two wickets away from death they actually TRIED to win the game or at least go for the recalculated winning draw total. We were poor in the field again which is why we did not win. Four catches were put down in the final reckoning.

And that is that. Wickman urges his colleagues to turn the season around next week against Stoke D’Ab. Stoke D’Ab are a seasoned outfit who will not be easily beaten so he fears that next week is make or break. We won’t go down. Nope. We might just end the season in sixth place and unbeaten though. Which would be awful. So let’s fulfil our potential guys or we might end the season talking about what ifs. And talking about this game again. Which would be dull.

MOM is tough. Coley, Golby and even Clarky all in it for various different kinds of batting performance; Tommy D's four for gave us a sniff of the victory. But we didn't win and actually on the day it was a team performance which took us to the doorstep but, instead of carrying us over the threshhold, ripping off our lacey bodice and doing us vigourously a number of times in various holes before falling asleep in the wet patch, actually bungled a snog and a grope, got the door slammed in our faces and trudged off across town with only a couple of quid in our pockets, enough tobacco for one roll up and no credits on our mobile.

Unlike Rozencrantz (or is it Guildenstern?) we could do with winning a toss.