Cavendish Cricket Club

In every team, in every season, there is one game of a very special kind: The Comedy Debacle. We all know it well, and we’ve all been on the receiving end plenty of times. But this, dear reader, is the tale of the most cartoon-like contest in the history of cricket.

The genius author actually began penning the back-story to the game back in May, carefully constructing emails to several parties. So deceptive were his scheduling plans that he succeeded in keeping the information from himself as well. That’s right, our club Secretary, Dr Damian Gardiner, had planned not one… not two… but THREE different teams to play against on a single evening. Yes, dear friends, it can now be revealed that while we were busily negotiating with the two opposition teams at Churchill, a third calmly waited for us while the birds twittered in the gleaming sunlight at Fitzwilliam Playing Field.

Back at Churchill, when we finally decided our opposition was to be Chemistry (on the basis of Microbiology only having 6 players and no captain present) we lost the toss and were sent to the field. L’Autheur (3/11) opened the attack with JB (2/11) as usual, and as usual the pair had them pinned down immediately. Unfortunately JB’s feet weren’t pinned down quite as well, and after taking a wicket and falling over at the same time, he exited the field to undertake some engineering work on his boots. This brought Crossland (0/20) into the attack, who bowled well and was very unlucky not to have a catch go to hand in the slips. We brought in two slips and a gully for most of the rest of the innings, and finished by terrorising the bad guys with Thomas and Brett (3/20) to have them all out for only 73 after 19.1 overs.

When Brett and Colin strode out the giggle factor increased dramatically as they apparently decided that all 73 runs should really be scored in boundaries, and preferably without any dot balls in between. Brett’s 55 not out was scored from around 20 balls, and in the 5th over alone the pair took 25 runs (4,3,4,4,4,6). Chemistry was duly humbled by 10 wickets in 5.5 overs, and we moved on to 7 wins from 8 games in the League.

B. Miller NO 55
C. Evans NO 15

D. Gardiner 5 1 11 3
J. Benesch 3 0 11 2
E. Crossland 5 0 20 0
B. Miller 5 0 20 3

Finally an evening that could be accurately classified as “summery”. The captain from the Goose-poop Institute called wrongly and we took the chance to bat on a bone dry pitch. Only Damo’s faulty petrol gauge and a late meeting at Brett’s new place of employ threatened to prevent us from racking up a decent total. Colin (42) got things off to a good start and anchored the innings while a series of deceptively straight, slow balls caused a procession until new man Sohail Ejaz strode to the crease. The only incident to marr his debut occurred when Colin confidently called him through for a single, advanced down the track and then realised that he was still leaning casually against his bat recovering from the previous run. Colin reared (for an instant resembling the startled Cavendish crocodile) before retreating to his nest only a split second too late. Sohail made amends by caressing a sweetly timed six back over the bowler’s head and into the tennis courts, and finished on 31 not out. Despite the scoreboard reading otherwise, the book shows our total was 129 for 7. (Mental note: must get Dadhichi to check his arithmetic in future).

After receiving adequate aid from the AA on the A14, Damo decided to give us an A grade performance with the ball. Despite his first ball being the most obvious caught behind in the history of the universe, the opposition decided otherwise, but Damo soon picked up a well deserved 3 wickets with accuracy and swing. JB ably supported with a wicket of his own, and then took a good catch off Thomas’ tight bowling. I managed to benefit from the cricketing equivalent of an own goal when the somewhat inexperienced batsman decided to watch the a deflection roll onto his off stump without impeding its path. Brett finished off the show with 3/8 (very nearly completing a hat-trick from his first over) to have the fat lady singing Sanger’s tune, all out for 73. That’s 6 out of 7, and 4 wins on the trot.

Batting

C. Evans RO 43
M. Riddle B 4
B. Miller C&B 9
J. Palfreyman B 11
J. Benesch C 7
K.J. Thomas B 3
S. Ejaz NO 31
C. Filayson B 0
D. Paretkar NO 12
D. Gardiner DNB
C. Harpur DNB

Extras 9

Total 7/129

We tried our best, but this evening’s match against Chemistry was abandoned after we lost the toss and elected to bat during the one sunny burst of the night. Brett and Colin blasted their way to 0/67 off only 7 overs before being were forced off the ground by rain. The game is to be rescheduled.