Wield vs Dummer, Sunday 9th Sept
Weather - In the words of Monty Python.....winter changed into spring, spring changed into summer, summer changed back into winter, and winter gave spring and summer a miss and went straight on into autumn.....
Which all means 27 degrees at the start and then a winter tornado bringing the temperature down 20 degrees or so!!!!!!!
Match summary – A quite fantastic game that went to the last ball
Our new skipper Robin started his new role by turning up 5 minutes after the start time!! He preceded to win the toss and in a completely new concept for Wield he decided to bat!!! In another quite frankly ridiculous decision he then dropped me down to 3!!!!!!!!!!
I watched on as Toby and Jack walked down the hill (15 mins late, Jack also managed to forget his shoes!!!!) hoping to repeat the 40 plus opening partnerships in each of the last 3 matches.
Opening down the hill was Dummer's 18 year old bowler George, who was bowling as quick as anyone had at Wield all year. Toby smashed a couple of drives past the bowler before Jack smashed a couple of fours through backward point, the partnership raced past 50 and I paced up and down waiting to bat!!!!
The partnership was finally broken on 65 when not for the first time this year Toby missed a straight one!! I joined Jack at the crease for some father son bonding and the score continued to increase before Jack was finally out top-edging a pull shot for another good 25.
Will looked good until for no particular reason he tapped a full toss to short extra cover, this brought George Phillips down the hill for his seasons debut. The saying goes that a cat has nine lives, in that case George has become a Wield pussy!!! To say George looked rusty was I bit of a understatement as ridiculous chance after ridiculous chance went by, including hitting the ball into his own foot and watching the ball roll back onto the stumps, only for the umpire to call no-ball!!!! Several edges went through the slips and numerous catches were dropped, run outs were missed and miss hits fell safe.
This madness could not continue and the worst 36 in cricket history finally came to it's inevitable and hilarious conclusion when yet another miss hit looped to square leg the fielder inexplicably dropped the ball only to see the ball fall into the hands of another fielder!!!!!
I decided to try and hit the opening bowler back over his head with the rather predictable outcome of the ball slowly lofting to mid-on!!!!
Another father and son duo of Mark and Sebi took us close to tea before another bizarre captaincy decision occurred when our skipper declared our innings on 183/5.
As we ate another fantastic tea the temperature dropped 15 degrees and we trudged down the hill wearing sweaters and wishing
we had brought gloves.
Ken opened with the new wind behind him, with Scott getting the
"into the wind" short straw. Dummer started as if in a hurry with opener Simon smashing a few long hops to the boundary. Scott extracted a decision from the umpire while the wind got stronger!!!
Robin brought himself on with Sebi replacing Ken. Robin bowled the usual tosh until he was given a very friendly LBW decision while Sebi bowled a lot better than he thought he had. Robin's wicket brought young George to the crease and he and Simon took a liking to the bowling. Mark decided that using his hands was overrated and literally threw his body at several hard hit drives and then tried not to show any pain!!!!
Will replaced Sebi and Robin finally took himself off and in another inspired piece of captaincy asked George to have a bowl!!! If our feline colleague looked rusty with the bat he just looked garbage with the ball!!! Long hop after long hop were gleefully smashed to the boundary and Dummer were closing in on our score.
Needing only 6 an over with 7 wickets left Simon finally ran out of
steam (literally) and a couple of quick wickets meant we were back in the game if we could only get Dummer's young ringer out. Another long hop was smashed by George straight to Scott at square leg who took a very sharp catch and we had a chance.
Ken and I worked together to get a run out and Dummer needed 11 off 18 balls with 3 wickets left. Ken got another wicket and Dummer needed 3 off the last over. Ken got another wicket with the penultimate ball flying to Toby at slip, with Dummer's no.10 showing his age as he slowly walked down the hill they needed 1 run off the final ball of the match.
As all the fielders crowded round Ken bowled and the batsmen missed the ball, the batsmen started to run as Max actually stopped the ball, he then threw the ball down the pitch to Ken. The batsmen then fell over in the middle of the pitch and Ken carefully walked to the non strikers end and whipped the bails off. In a remarkably similar incident to the world famous Toby Flack bat throwing incident!!!!! Dummer's no.10 threw his bat towards the stumps and missing them almost took out Sebi.
366 runs 4 hours of glorious sunshine, a brisk tornado and the first tie at Wield for a while!!! A great days cricket.
Tony
