HWRCC SUNDAY XI vs VILLAGE XI

Sunday XI defeated Village XI (you may have to check this - Duckworth Lewis is confusing)

WICK 200 - 4 (Matty D 60-odd; Cranesy 78+)

def

Village XI - 120 for 4 off 25 overs or so

Adam "maturity" Crane (that's how i'm seeing it) smashing a walloping 78 of the best runs you are likely to see.

FANCY AN ALTERNATIVE WICK WASH?

Heavy rain forces match to be abandoned as Wick continue unbeaten run….

Adam "my time has come" Crane smashes a walloping 78 of the best runs you will see, making Matty D look ordinary in the process

Jimmy C heads to the bowl....

WICK SUNDAY XI: 200 - 4 (Matty D 60-odd; Cranesy 78+)

Def (Actually the match was abandoned but....runs on the board orrr…..)

Village XI - 120 for 4 off 25 overs or so

(From Taxi Driver, 1976)

Travis Bickle: Thank God for the rain to wash the trash off the sidewalk.

Travis Bickle: I think someone should just take this city and just... just flush it down the $%^!” toilet.

We all know that rain and cricket are not the best of friends. Like Hanz Fritzel and one of his several daughters locked up in an underground bunker……you can guess the rest. But despite this, the two are inextricably linked (well...not really), and there’s nothing worse (obviously there is) than being drenched in the stuff as your team puts on the old strides and walks out to the crease for a bit of “white line fever”.

However too often, I fear, we see the rain as a threat and not an opportunity to the game. As Travis Bickle expressed so clearly in Taxi Driver, it can have a positive influence. In his case, a huge downpour is a chance to clean up the city's prostitutes and cellar dwellers and flush them all down the toilet. They were the scum who infruriated him so, and made his existence hell.

Now, i'm not saying that a heavy downpour at the Wick is akin to this at all. Rather, it is a chance to develop a clean slate and start again. Forget about the early season “errors”, this is the time to put things right. Carpe diem and all that….

Cranesy did just that with his performance on Sunday. Jimmy C also did this, but for a completely different reason.

Despite losing the toss, the Wick were sent in to bat on a pretty decent deck in gale force winds and spitting rain. To say that the going was tough would be an understatement. After 20 overs, we had lost two wickets for the princely sum of just 49 runs. Things weren’t looking great.

However, the re-emergence of Adam Crane changed all of this. Where have you been all season mate? - He couldn’t fail to hit the ball. Alongside Matty D, the pair helped take the Wick to 200 at the end of 40 overs and, in the process, Adsa smashed 6s and 4s at will down the ground and to all ends of the park. It was great to watch.

Teas – very lively (I’m talking diarrhoea- style)

After the break, we headed out to bowl as the downpour started. Whinney and Leggsy bowled magnificently in the conditions and, save a catch from Jimmy C to remove the opener, were unlucky not to pick up more wickets.

Despite the great bowling efforts of Leggsy and Whinney, the runs kept flowing for the Village. However, they weren’t just flowing on the scoreboard. At around the 17th over, the skipper decided to remove himself from the field of play for his own kind of “bowl” work, allegedly suffering from the effects of the chocolate slices that DBW put out during the teas. Like Steve Harmison at the Brisbane test in the Ashes, he was spraying all over the place……Eventually, he came out to the field to resume proceedings. It was not a pretty sight. There’s even talk that his pants are still in the wash.

Luckily for Jimmy’s bowels, the game came to end as the rain grew heavier and the clouds became darker. Like Travis Bickle, he had been doing some flushing of his own….and felt relieved for it.

Wickman Junior.