RUASCC 171 all out
Dip 51, Malde 37
Mortimer 162-4
Baker 2-31, D. Singh 1-14
Match drawn
For many years now the English Cricket Board (ECB) has set
out a series of directives for the management of young players in an effort to protect
them from injury and harm. This includes
things like making sure they wear helmets when batting or keeping, and limiting
the number of overs they can bowl in a spell.
But as far as I’m aware there is no such set of directives to protect us
older players from the demoralising effects of getting smashed all over the
park week after week by these same precocious little bastards.
I don’t know what business they have being so bloody
talented anyway. A 16-year-old boy
should be fat, spotty and socially unacceptable… unless that was just me. As a teenager my only recognisable talent was
for eating crisps, having stepped up from KitKats around the time of my twelfth
birthday. A 16-year-old definitely
should NOT be well-built, polite and considerably better than me at something I’ve
been trying to do for LONGER THAN THEY HAVE BEEN A THING.
You can probably guess where this is going. We arrived for a game in Mortimer and saw
that half the home side were younger than the RUASCC kit bag, and only by 8pm, once
we had narrowly avoided defeat, could we escape to the pub safe in the
knowledge that they weren’t allowed to follow us.
Having lost the toss and been asked to bat on a pitch with
no significant bounce, Ward was given LBW early on but Eagle began positively,
driving a four through square and then levering a huge six over fine leg. After two more boundaries from the skipper he
was bowled for 22, then both Jas Singh and John Baker were done by balls that
kept low. At 77-4 we were running out of
top order.
Fortunately both Dip and Chan decided this was the right
time to post their top scores of the season.
By showing commendable concentration and attacking the bad balls the
pair added 81 important runs in the next 14 overs. Dip reached his annual half-century with his
sixth four, but five minutes later both batsmen were out, and the significance
of the partnership became increasingly apparent when the last six wickets fell
for just 13 runs and RUASCC collapsed to 171 all out.
(Special mention here for the tea, which was widely
acknowledged to be the best so far this season.)
An early breakthrough for Singh (D) looked promising but the
second wicket pair pushed the score up to 78 with the help of some generous
donations from Withers who is now wicketless in three matches. After a much-needed change of bowling Baker
took two wickets in quick succession - the first thanks to a catch from Withers
who by now had been banished to the deep mid-wicket boundary.
This brought a young man named Fritz to the crease, and this
is exactly the sort of problem child I was talking about before. There he is with his immaculate defensive
technique. There he goes picking off the
leg-side full tosses and dispatching them to the boundary. Look at him turning singles into twos with
his sharpness between the wickets. And
listen to him politely acknowledging a rare decent ball from the non-striker’s
end. What are the ECB doing to protect
us from this indignity? Nothing! There should be a rule that these kids can
only bat for six overs in a spell, the insufferable, talented, well-rounded,
amiable little shits.
With ten overs remaining Mortimer still needed 80 to win,
but then they started scoring at ten runs an over which caused Dr Eagle a good
deal of concern. RUASCC, missing Zia,
seemed incapable of tying down either end and soon Fritz, and his much more
experienced partner, needed 22 from the final two. Fritz took plenty from the penultimate over but
in a frantic bid for a single was run out on the last ball for 46.
Withers was called upon to bowl the final over, a task which
was made considerably less daunting by the departure of Fritz, except that the
new batsman was Fritz’s slightly bigger older brother. Fortunately he struggled to lay bat on ball
and only managed to add three runs to the score, and RUASCC left the pitch
relieved to have earned a draw.
RUASCC Highlight: When Andy Eagle faced a bowler called Andy
with Andy Ashman and Andy Greenhalf umpiring.
A really special moment for Andy fans.
RUASCC Man of the
Match: Dip.
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