Hurst 198-5 dec.
Ashman 1-27, D. Singh 1-32, Waqar 1-33
RUASCC 192-8
Eagle 47, Waqar 30, D. Singh 23
Match Drawn
In the week leading up to the Hurst game, through long nights
disturbed by thunder and sweaty heat, I confess that in rare moments of fitful slumber
I had some very interesting dreams about my favourite scorebox.
One night I somehow took the whole scorebox home with me and
used it to keep track of various television programmes, the quality of my
wife's cooking and in particular each delivery by the postman. In another
I simply gave up playing cricket to become Hurst's full-time scorer, which on
Sunday's evidence might not be such a bad career move. I won't go into
detail about the other dreams, most of which are simply too intense for a
family cricket blog, but on one occasion I woke up clicking the bedside lamp on
and off repeatedly in the mistaken belief that I was acknowledging an umpire's
signal.
As it happened I did get to spend a very enjoyable couple of
hours with my scorebox, largely uninterrupted, watching my RUASCC teammates put
together a rather disjointed but at times thrilling attempt to chase down
almost 200. Later, once I’d emerged
drained but smiling, I joined the post-match analysis during which it was
widely agreed that the blame for not winning the match could be laid squarely
at the door of our captain Dr Eagle.
Alas I didn’t take down notes of the discussion but as I
recall these were the main points:
* He lost the toss and we were asked to field
first on a roasting hot day. Had he won
the toss he would of course have chosen to field first on a roasting hot day.
* He dropped a catch at short extra cover and in
doing so suffered a painful merger between cricket ball and knee. He spent the next few overs sitting by the
boundary with an ice pack while the Hurst batsmen picked holes in our (slightly)
depleted field.
* His 47 runs were compiled too slowly and he
should have got out sooner to allow faster-scoring batsmen to take up the
chase. In the skipper’s defence I argued
that Eagle gets out quickly almost every other week and it doesn’t usually seem
to help us.
* He deliberately chipped one to point on 47 to
avoid buying a jug. OK we still might
not have won but at least there would have been a jug.
I’m sure there were lots of other things too.
Other notable highlights included the safe return of Dr
Ashman from his trip to Brazil, a brilliant counter-attack by Waqar who hit 30
late in the game, and a massive car crash just outside the ground that stopped
play for 10 minutes. Fortunately it
seemed no one was badly hurt but it was deemed serious enough to warrant an
ambulance, a fire engine and seven police cars to close part of the road.
Earlier in the day Withers sent down another 14 largely
unsuccessful overs (his only wicket coming from a low full toss) to take his
season’s total to 96 overs in 9 games yielding a mere 18 wickets. I’m reasonably confident in saying that no
one in the RUASCC team puts in quite so much effort for such meagre results.
RUASCC Highlight: Eagle getting smacked on the knee.
RUASCC Man of the
Match: Waqar, for once it was his
batting rather than bowling that stood out, but it seems incredible to me that
he even survived such a punishing day in the third week of fasting.
