Birdlip 158-5 (20
overs)
Zia 2-13, Main 2-33, Withers 1-17
RUASCC 159-3 (18.1
overs)
Zia 62 not out, Griffiths 41 not out, Extras 33
RUASCC won by 7
wickets
This was our third game against Birdlip, the third time Ian
Green has scored 70-odd not out against us and eventually our third excellent
win. The only game of our 2014 tour saw
the welcome returns of Carpenter, Manoj Kumar and Young Sam Griffiths to the
RUASCC side.
Batting first Birdlip recovered from 9-3 to post a
competitive total but Zia and Young Sam chased it down in the darkness with 11
balls to spare, Griffiths sealing the win with a six over square leg. Up to this point it was Zia’s highest score
of the season, and since Sam spends most of his time playing football and
management consulting these days it was nice to see he can still use a cricket
bat too.
Now, it would be all too easy to pick out the negatives from
our 2014 tour of Cheltenham which is good because that’s exactly what we’re
going to do.
After a month of sunshine in the UK it became apparent in
the week leading up to tour that the weather was looking dodgy at best. Tropical Storm Bertha was making her way
across the Atlantic and was poised to dump her not inconsiderable load upon the
west of England effectively obliterating Sunday. No problem, we had games lined up for Friday
and Saturday. Hang on, except that
Aldsworth just called and said they couldn’t raise a team. So we were left with one 20/20 game on the
Friday evening, which was played in near-constant drizzle and was completed
before our 12th player, Dr Ashman had even arrived in Cheltenham.
There followed an enjoyable evening with a good meal, plenty
of wine and several rounds in the hotel bar before my 6.30am start caught up
with me and I headed to my room faced with the prospect of a snoring Kiwi and
an ineffective air-conditioning system. Fortunately
I was suitably anaesthetised and made it through to the morning relatively unscathed.
On Saturday we had to make our own entertainment. Several headed to New Road to watch Worcestershire
chase down 300 to win an exciting one-day game while others (OK, just Bruce and
me) went for a walk up a hill. This
would have been a welcome excursion had we not spent four hours walking up and
down hills the previous day. Tiring of
hills and walking, we headed to the nearest pub with a TV and watched the final
session of the fourth Test Match (India 33-1 at tea, all out by close). And that was as much cricket as we got.
After spending a couple of hours eating and drinking in the
pub, it was time to go out eating and drinking.
Eagle had booked an excellent curry house but didn’t know where it was,
so we all left the hotel following Chan, who also didn’t know where it was. Fortunately Chan had satnav on his phone so
we spent the next 25 minutes getting lost while Chan looked at this phone. Having wandered down yet another dead end we
were finally pointed in the right direction by a couple of locals and soon we
were seated in a curry house far too posh for the likes of us.
As I looked at the menu, struggling to decide between the
£21 biryani and the £20 tikka masala (I needn’t have worried, my meal somehow
cost £38 anyway) I was presented with a jeroboam of warm taste-free beer that
someone else thankfully ended up drinking for me. That said, the food was nice, as it pissing
well ought to have been for £38, and the company adequate.
Sure enough Bertha arrived on Sunday morning and soon it was
confirmed that there would be no cricket that day either. So for two and a half hours I sat at the
breakfast buffet joined by various teammates in turn, reading a free newspaper
eating croissant after croissant and wishing I’d got more sleep. At 11am we all checked out of the hotel and
decided not much else remained to do but get home as quickly as possible.
Fantastic weekend away, can’t wait till next year!
RUASCC Man of the
Match: Two wickets and an unbeaten fifity, I reckon probably Zia.
RUASCC Team: Zia, Malde, Ward (wkt2), Carpenter, Griffiths
(wkt1), Eagle (capt), Kumar, Main, Tranter, Stewart, Withers
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