9th May 2nd game 2022

 2nd game of the season. initially selected to play in the 4's and then at the last minute as I'm about to pack my bag I get a call and I'm asked to play in the 5's. To be honest the 5's were playing at Wickford memorial park and I quite fancied playing there as I've not been there for years and the last we put out a team with 8 players, six of them small boys and it was awful.

This week looked better, it looked as though we were going to play with a full team. There was some faffing as it's not obvious which pitch is what, but the '3rd' pitch apparently is the one in front of the no longer used for cricket pavilion/changing rooms.

The weather was glorious and the wicket looked pretty good. The outfield though was full of cut grass and the surrounding vegetation beyond the boundary looked thick and unkempt. The opposition began to turn up along with our team. The make up of our team...

I've bunged in an approximation of our teams ages. This 5th XI changes from week to week and there's only a core group of players... Farhan, Aariz (Farhan's son), Martin and Kiegan Scannell (Father and son). The rest of us play sporadically - some because they play in the 4's others because of work commitments. Hassan has only ever played 3 times before because of work and his previous scores were 0 - 4 - 7 or something very similar. Muhammed, Sri, Fawad, Umer and me are bowlers as far as I can make out and the only recognised batters as such are Farhan and Martin. Reece has been noted to give the ball a bit of a biff. 

The opposition were proportionately much older with a kid who'd never played adult cricket before but stepped up as they were a player short and few 20 year olds.

We won the toss and opted to bat. Their openers bowled quite well, but were supported in the field particularly well, but the grass helped them out. We got off to a reasonable start and then lost 2 and Reece joined the captain and started to accumulate rans at a reasonable rate. We were going well and then we lost Farhan our best bat. Then Hassan walked in off the back of 0-4 and 7 in the past three games and all hell was unleashed on the Galleywood lads. See below...

Hasson almost dealt in only 4's and 6's and as their bowlers became more and more demoralised Reece grew in confidence and batted his way through to 103 before being run out. Hassan was bowled eventually and we finished on ***

As the Galleywood lads came off the captain said that the game would be over quite quick as they didn't have any batting.

The first couple of blokes went cheaply as one of our bowlers - Fawad Butt looked pretty handy - fast and accurate. Their skipper had to go off, injured having pulled up for some reason and he said he couldn't see himself coming back on again. Then the small boy came out and and his Dad came out with him to umpire and asked if we could take it easy with him as the game was already ours by a long long way and we said we would. Having not batted, I wanted to bowl, so Farhan took off of Fawad and put me on at the "River end". 

This did mean if they had any right-handed sloggers I'd be ending up in the bushes and trees, I was hoping to bowl from the Road end with the advantage of a bigger boundary and put a my new fielding theory into action. I was just desperate to have a bowl so was happy to have the River End. In the meantime the small boy was caught off the first ball and I'd pointed out that "You can't get out on the first ball" everyone chuckled and the kid got another go. Someone else caught him and dropped the ball. My first ball was to the kid  - I bowled him and I'd already said if I bowl him just call a no-ball. These shenanigans went on for a few overs while we worked on the blokes at the other end. 

Two of them took me to task...

J. Brown came out and went for it. I wasn't bowling well at all, I was trying to get the ball to turn from leg, but just wasn't getting any revs on the ball. I tried a flipper and that was a little short and that went the distance, so then started to bowl with more over-spin (Top-Spin). In between overs walking past this bloke he commented "You're tricky bowler - one ball's on the floor (That'll be the flipper) and then the next is up around my neck"! (That'll be the top-spinner). The next over I bowled a couple of the non-spinning leggies and then a faster top-spinner which rushed on and took him by surprise hitting the top of the bat and he poked it back to me for a bowled and caught.

This Bloke (below) I didn't get him, but he was run out and that was the end of the game, but he wasn't a bad player.

The bowling figures...

6-0-40-3 Given the circumstance I'll take that.