Match called off due
to rain
Another wet April weekend means RUASCC are O for 2 so far
this season, though at least we can consider ourselves significantly more
fortunate than Wirral CC whose Cheshire League game survived the weather on
Saturday.
Chasing a modest 109 to win, Wirral’s first 10 batsmen were
all dismissed without scoring (six were clean bowled). Their only run off the bat was scored by
their number 11 and even he was outscored by the two leg byes. Two balls into the tenth over the innings was
complete: three all out, and defeat by 105 runs.
I’m not sure what it was about this hapless and embarrassing
batting collapse that got me thinking about RUASCC. I remember a few Sunday afternoons when,
facing nothing better than village bowling, the stumps suddenly feel six feet
wide, the bat’s like a toothpick, the ball seems to nip both ways at 95mph and
there are 42 fielders close in for the catch.
Where the opposition had been regularly finding the boundary, we can’t
get the ball off the square.
It was mostly a very different story last season, of course
- last season we were an unstoppable run-chasing machine. In one of our most memorable wins from 2013,
at Frieth, we started out having a bit of a Wirral - six wickets down in 12
overs – but spectacularly turned it round when a change of bowling allowed Main
and Zia to go on the attack. We finished
with over 200 and won by 48 runs.
The Wirral story serves to remind me once again how glad I
am to be a bowler. An unlucky (or inept)
batsman gets one chance and that’s it: your afternoon is over. A bowler can serve up shit on toast for half
an hour and still end up with half-decent figures. Speaking as a number 11, the fragility of
batting troubles me – there’s too much that can go wrong with such disastrous
effect. That’s where my crippling
defensiveness comes from: fear of failure.
This is why I have the utmost respect for batsmen who embrace the
loneliness, go for their shots and take control of the game.
I have no doubt that, come Saturday, one of those Wirral batsmen
will stand tall, spank their first ball to the boundary and in that single
stroke surpass the team’s total from last weekend. Because the thing you have to remember about
cricket is that you will fail, and sometimes you’ll fail huge, but there’ll always
be another game.
That’s if it stops pissing it down.
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