Calypso at Crosby

On a glorious summer’s day at Crosby, Cronkbourne looked to finish off their Premiership campaign with a flourish. They didn’t. But they won.

The team, keen as mustard, arrived so early, it was still the morning, and after a completely unnecessarily sweaty warm up were ready to “put 250+ on the board”. The captain, who had revised his decision to play with 10 to a squad of 13, focussed his pre-match talk on setting a strong base, and building from there. “Look at them lads, who are their 4th and 5th bowlers? It will be absolute filth out there!”.

Armed with this, the batting started very positively, the Skipper and Boom Boom, laying that firm base, and ticked along nicely to 60 odd for 0 off 11. Then the fun began. The Skipper led a series of grubby little nicks to the keeper, and from a commanding position, we were 3 down by drinks. Boom Boom then contrived to smack the first ball after the break, a waist high full toss, back at the lumbering bowler. The collapse, reminiscent of the past few seasons, continued, and the Chairman looked sufficiently narked by a complete inability to play an adequate forward defensive stroke. Our woes were summed up by the Sloth getting bowled by big Jack, who celebrated like a geezer. From 62 for 0, we had moved to 99 for 8 after 26 overs.

Armed with Al’s advice to “play that horrible forward prod Hews”, a completely narked Hewson walked to the crease irritated that he had been torn away from his Sunday paper, and forced to go and do that batting thing for such a prolonged period of time. Knightsy, took up the senior batsman role superbly, by aggressively swinging at anything with a bit of width, and missing every time. Aided by the Skipper’s predicted filthy bowling, the two of them proceeded to rack up the most unexpected 50 partnership of the season. Up the other end, Hewson who had by this point started apologising to the opposition for having to witness some of his less eloquent blocks, “Sorry guys, that was horrible. Horrible cricket from me!” , had managed to prod his way into double figures, all the time fuming that Gary had pissed off and was unable to photograph him “looking cricket”. After realising that Knightsy couldn’t drive to save his life, and Hewson was vulnerable to everything which required him to adopt a different position from his ready made forward defensive stance, Crosby did finally manage to wangle the two of them out, Cronkbourne finishing on 152 all out.

With the Skipper’s wish for “5 wides or less from our 40 overs”, Bert opened up with a wide… and then a wicket. From then, Jack Rowlands auditioned for a transfer to St Johns by batting for a good time not a long time. Will shelled one, then caught one, and Crosby were in a spot of bother but always in the game. After replacing his mixed bag of dross with his brother’s bag of bits, the Skipper then dropped a “dolly”, much to Al’s annoyance. Only captain’s privilege kept him from being “hidden” at third man for the rest of the day. Killey who had been relatively chirpy for himself, got unnecessarily het up at the arrival of a small child to the crease. “He doesn’t talk enough. I hate it. I hate him. I’m going to fuck*ng get at him”. All this time, Danny Kniveton kept Crosby on track, and it wasn’t until an inspired field change kept Danny on strike for the Skipper, that he finally perished to a stonking ball! Confident that the game had been won after some economic bowling from Steven ‘the new Philly’ Slack, Al kept things interesting by being biffed for a couple of biggys by Aaron ‘I didn’t know he could hit it off the square’ Thompson, but Bert finished proceedings early next over.

Cronkbourne 152 all out
Crosby close but no cigar (I think they were maybe 22 runs short?!?)

In other news:
Waggy was spotted in a pub, socialising. He drank a coke.

Always a pleasure, good luck for next week and see you all next year at some point. And yes, I will still be talking about this knock and that Tendulkar-esque cut over the slips next summer!

Hewson