Theale & Tilehurst vs Warfield 2 24th July 2004

BACK

Report by Chef

"Clang".  That was the sound of my golden balls dropping on the floor and rolling out of sight.  "Screech, Crash" that was the sound of the 2nd's being derailed.

I am writing this the night of the game and as some of you may be reading this at work, for every expletive I mean to say, I am going to swap for an animal.  So let's start by describing our performance:

Monkey, Chameleon, Baboon, Rat, Armadillo, Kangaroo, Wallaby bunch of Hamsters!!!

It all started off well, sort of.  The skipper tried to convince me that to make a game of it we should bat first.  I said "will I Mongoose!", lets toss.  We did, I lost, we went in to bat.  From here on the sole blame must go to Ian Reeves who has gone to America for 2 weeks and left us without a lucky mascot.  We lost coz of you.  I hope you can sleep at night.

So we went out to bat and things were going at quite a pace, although we lost the occasional wicket, but good partnerships throughout.  It was left to Oneal who scored a brilliant and entertaining 63 to put us on track and also gaining him his first 50 in any form of cricket. 

It was a lovely sunny day and towards the later stages of the game, the ball decided to sit on the balcony of an overlooking house and catch some rays.  The reason being is that Doc clattered it onto the balcony which became one of the biggest sixes I've seen.

We (which towards the end of the game seemed to turn into Chef) decided to declare with 41 overs gone on 218 for 7, giving us 49 overs to bowl them out.  What a Marmoset bad decision that turned out to be.  In actual fact it didn't make much of a difference in the end but there we go.  Ian you Porcupine.

Things went from bad to worse, with Parrot  poor bowling and Flamingo appalling fielding.  We dropped Deveson twice, was LBW twice and run out once, yet bizarrely he was still at the crease.  The cause of this was down to Nayab, Myself and two people who stood behind the wickets.  I won't call the umpires in case I'm sued for libel. Cheating mother Woodpeckers!

Midway through the 2nd innings we had to change balls and we ended up with an awful ball.  Nayab complained but then I pointed out that "you let the Goat  hit it out of the ground".  This turned out to be a bit of a bonus as we took more wickets with the old ball, than the new, in fact all three.

I'm also concerned about our players.  They seem to have had their hands amputated.  I can only assume that's the case as no Frog used them!  In fairness Steve & Trevor both fielded very well, opting for different styles.  Trevor went for the body behind everything (as his bruises will testify) and Steve went for the more conventional use of the hands.

The first breakthu was Chef off his short run up with the old ball, caught by Cameron with a legside catch during the worst over of bowling he has ever bowled.  Then Rags finally bowled Deveson......thank Fox for that!  Then Chef finally caught one on the boundary and they finished on 219 for 3 off 34.5.  Showing that even if we hadn't declared, they still had plenty of time to get whatever runs remained.  Seahorse Poor bowling and Goldfish Poor fielding.

More bowling and fielding performances like that and we won't even get promotion, let alone win the league.  So next week there will be some fielding practice before the game, so let that be a lesson to us.  Play like school boys and I'll treat us like them.  Sadly the one school boy in the team played like an adult!

Gibbon, Hedgehog, Penguin, Platypus, Racoon, cricket! I hate it! 

Thank Donkey I'm not going on tour! 

You can stick next years captaincy up your Asp!