Quokkas CCC 173 for 7 (Irfan 100 n/o) beat Wantage & Grove 169-6 (Ali 2 for 9, Radio 1 for 25, Josh 1 for 37)
I’ve not got a long-winded intro to this match report. My free time seems to have totally consumed by managing a hoard of unruly under 9 cricketers. I will never mention the amount of teacher’s school holidays again. They should get more time off. You’ll just have to make do with the basics, which are as follows:
They won the toss and decided to bowl. Jez and Irfan opened proceedings and were pretty much unplayable, going for just 23 runs from their combined 11 overs. Lovely. Next up Jatin and Radio John provided varying degrees of flight and turn and for different reasons were both hard to get away. Radio, thankful for batsman turning his wides into dots balls, seems to have developed a new delivery that I christened ‘the satellite’, because it touches the upper realms of the atmosphere, travels in line with curvature of the earth and with good fortune lands on top of the bails. A notch in the wicket’s column proving its effectiveness. Jatin on the other hand failed to get a wicket, but his deliveries had a more traditional ark. He’ll learn. On came Josh, and once he slowed down, he bowled well too, and got a wicket for his troubles, thanks to a tidy catch from Rashid.
In general, wickets were hard to come by though. When we did get one, Paolo tried to claim it as a stumping off his bowling. Hmm. When the batsman hits the ball, Faggie, playing as the wicket keeper, runs about fifteen yards down to retrieve it before knocking the stumps over from a direct hit as the batsman dither half-way down the track, personally, I put that down as a run out. I’ll let you decide on that one.
Despite such great fielding, our hosts kept the scoreboard ticking over. 33 wides and 10 no balls, many of them in Paolo’s solitary over, certainly helped boost the total. It was therefore time for a change and Ali immediately showed everyone how it was done by clean bowling two Wantage batters. Time for tea.
As usual, the spread was fantastic, with two sponge cakes, a plethora of sandwiches and strawberries and cream. Marks were lost for small plates though. During the break we discussed Emo, the politicly correct terminology to use in relation to the vertically challenged South African captain and the actual probability of being bitten by a shark. (Ed: The segways between those discussions must have been something else). I think we may have covered that topic before last summer, but with a trip to Rottnest Island around the corner, it’s good to brush up on such things. Its 1 in 3.7 million by the way, rising to 1 in 28 million for a fatality. Not sure I like those odds.
Time for some batting. In reply it was the Irfan…and Paolo show. He, I mean they, put on a wonderful 100 run partnership. It must be said that Irfan carried most of the heavy listing, but Paolo did contribute…a grand total of four runs. In truth, Paolo played very well, frustrating our opponents with a mixture of defensive shots complimented by regular plays and misses. I think he said something along the lines of “If you don’t hit it, you can’t edge it”. Upstairs for thinking, downstairs for dancing, or it would be if he hadn’t developed a nasty toe injury that might lead to a Gary Linekar style retirement.
Irfan on the other hand smashed the ball to all parts of the ground in an innings that included some outrageous switch hits. As always there was a lot of guile too - we may have found a better late cutter of the ball than Faggie. It was brilliant to watch. Not everyone shared my enthusiasm. There were some mutterings from the locals about him being “too good”, which is fair, but retirement at 50 is a new one on me, so we sat back and enjoyed the show.
Once he reached his hundred, he did retire, which began a mini batting collapse that threatened to ruin our day. Josh, Jatin and Ali all fell in quick succession, and there was scrambling for kit to avoid being timed out, but that’s pretty much where the drama ended as Seagull and Jez dug in, hit the odd bad ball to the boundary and saw us safely home.
Seagull