“If you can't answer a man's arguments, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names.”
~ Elbert Hubbard (June 19, 1856 – May 7, 1915) was an American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher.
The day dawned brightly last Sunday as I drove out to Oakleigh to take on Emmanuel Oakleigh who sit third on the ladder and had just toppled top of the table Nationals. These were going to be tough hombres to crack on their home turf. Speaking of turf, I nearly died of shock when I took one look out at the playing arena.
How can I best describe it?
It looked like desert sand with the odd tuft of weeds here and there. It was pretty much devoid of any grass anywhere. While the wicket itself was a nice green colour and looked like it would play truly, the outfield was horrible. It was with some irony that on a sign hanging off the fence, it proudly read that “Drought Resistant Grass has been planted on this oval”. The only problem was, this drought resistant grass had died off long ago.
Anyways, we lost the toss and had been put in to bat. I was slated to open this week and I made my way out to the middle with the unflappable Nat “Mr Natural” Williams. The plan was to get to the ten over mark and then start pushing it on from there. Nat offered to take first strike which I was appreciative of, as I am always an extremely nervous opener. From the first balls Nat faced, I could see that the pitch was offering swing to the young Emmanuel bowler Michael Tate. At the end of the over Nat informed me that Tate was not only getting the ball to move away from the batsman off the deck, but also through the air.
I faced up to Emanuel captain Ralph who off a short run up generated a bit more pace and bounce than Tate and also swung the ball away. This was seriously tough going and the bowling was very tight.
I was lucky enough to get off the mark fairly early on in unorthodox fashion when I got a single down to fine leg when I French Cut a delivery from Ralph who glared at me in disgust at my apparent luck.
Nat was handling the bowling intelligently by leaving well alone anything outside his off stump and only playing at anything that simply had to be played. I figured that this was a good strategy that I also was going to adopt so we could get to our first objective, which was to survive until the tenth over.
The Emmanuel boys are pretty vocal out on the field which is all good and perfectly acceptable to me in how cricket should be played. However, Emmanuel Captain Ralph was a bit more personal in his biting remarks. Perhaps because he was fielding at silly mid off and was the closest of all their fielders. All the same, he fired off some sly sledges at me and I made a mental note that when Ralph came out to bat, I was going to give him a warm welcome and remind him that two can play the sledging game.
I soon played a very sweet cut shot off an infuriated Ralph which flew off the middle of my bat and promptly brought up puffs of sand when it bounced past the diving Point fieldsmen and raced away to the long, long square boundary. It tantalizingly stopped up less than a foot short of the boundary and would easily have been a four on any other ground in the MCA, but not on this huge ground. As Nat and I scampered through for three runs, I didn’t notice that the fieldsman had grabbed the fence with one hand when he picked up the ball with his other hand. It was my teammates that informed me about this later – so it should have been a four!
~ Elbert Hubbard (June 19, 1856 – May 7, 1915) was an American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher.
The day dawned brightly last Sunday as I drove out to Oakleigh to take on Emmanuel Oakleigh who sit third on the ladder and had just toppled top of the table Nationals. These were going to be tough hombres to crack on their home turf. Speaking of turf, I nearly died of shock when I took one look out at the playing arena.
How can I best describe it?
It looked like desert sand with the odd tuft of weeds here and there. It was pretty much devoid of any grass anywhere. While the wicket itself was a nice green colour and looked like it would play truly, the outfield was horrible. It was with some irony that on a sign hanging off the fence, it proudly read that “Drought Resistant Grass has been planted on this oval”. The only problem was, this drought resistant grass had died off long ago.
Anyways, we lost the toss and had been put in to bat. I was slated to open this week and I made my way out to the middle with the unflappable Nat “Mr Natural” Williams. The plan was to get to the ten over mark and then start pushing it on from there. Nat offered to take first strike which I was appreciative of, as I am always an extremely nervous opener. From the first balls Nat faced, I could see that the pitch was offering swing to the young Emmanuel bowler Michael Tate. At the end of the over Nat informed me that Tate was not only getting the ball to move away from the batsman off the deck, but also through the air.
I faced up to Emanuel captain Ralph who off a short run up generated a bit more pace and bounce than Tate and also swung the ball away. This was seriously tough going and the bowling was very tight.
I was lucky enough to get off the mark fairly early on in unorthodox fashion when I got a single down to fine leg when I French Cut a delivery from Ralph who glared at me in disgust at my apparent luck.
Nat was handling the bowling intelligently by leaving well alone anything outside his off stump and only playing at anything that simply had to be played. I figured that this was a good strategy that I also was going to adopt so we could get to our first objective, which was to survive until the tenth over.
The Emmanuel boys are pretty vocal out on the field which is all good and perfectly acceptable to me in how cricket should be played. However, Emmanuel Captain Ralph was a bit more personal in his biting remarks. Perhaps because he was fielding at silly mid off and was the closest of all their fielders. All the same, he fired off some sly sledges at me and I made a mental note that when Ralph came out to bat, I was going to give him a warm welcome and remind him that two can play the sledging game.
I soon played a very sweet cut shot off an infuriated Ralph which flew off the middle of my bat and promptly brought up puffs of sand when it bounced past the diving Point fieldsmen and raced away to the long, long square boundary. It tantalizingly stopped up less than a foot short of the boundary and would easily have been a four on any other ground in the MCA, but not on this huge ground. As Nat and I scampered through for three runs, I didn’t notice that the fieldsman had grabbed the fence with one hand when he picked up the ball with his other hand. It was my teammates that informed me about this later – so it should have been a four!
In any case, after some considerable struggle, we had reached the half way mark of our first objective by having safely navigated the fifth over of the innings. I told Nat at the mid pitch conference “another five overs mate and then we will see where we go next”.
During the seventh over, I played and missed a delivery by Tate that beat the keeper who was standing up to the stumps to keep me in my crease. Taking up my usual stance nearly a meter outside my crease to nullify any LBWs, I was no forced to sit back in the crease, but I was not undually worried, though Tate was causing me some problems with his swing through the air rather than off the pitch.
Then a full delivery from Tate drew me forward with my left foot planted down the pitch almost as far as I could stretch when in my anxiety, I missed the full swinging delivery which hit my toe on the full and a loud appeal went up. I was not duly concerned as I felt that I had taken a very long stride down the pitch and moreover, I also thought that it hit me marginally outside offstump and was swinging towards slip anyway.
Surely, the umpire would have to give me the benefit of the doubt? Not on your life. He fired me out pretty quickly and I was forced to troop off in great disappointment at having failed to see through to the first goal of surviving at least until the tenth over.
Dave “Doc” Neal strode in at number three and also had trouble adjusting to the swinging ball and capitulated soon enough, LBW for five. Now we were in some bother and it wasn’t helped by the fact that Nat who had survived at the other end and was starting to look comfortable, was also out for four. Three top order wickets down and we didn’t even total fifteen between us. That was not the start we needed.
Ragu and Richie The Dragon then settled things down with a very sensible partnership that was to advance the total to forty seven before Richie fell for a well made twenty to continue his recent run of good form. Ragu was next to go for nineteen with the score on sixty two before Strachany was also dismissed by the now rampant Ranatunga for three. This was Ranatunga’s third wicket and he had bowled beautifully for Emmanuel.
Johnny Spooner – a newspaper cartoonist by trade then stood tall with Disco McDonald putting on a hard hitting and valuable partnership that gave us renewed hope. Johnny Spooner was eventually dismissed for eighteen priceless runs and Disco contributed an innings top score of twenty seven to eventually get our score to 131 all out. Not a great score by any stretch, but at least we now had something to bowl to which for a long time did not look like being the case.
Emmanuel set off on their chase particularly well losing one of their openers very early on to Disco. It was an innocuous dismissal – but they all count. As the runs mounted, the wickets continued to fall and then Emmanuel started to stumble as they came within sight of victory.
Enter Emmanuel captain James Ralph.
I gave him a bit of needle to remind him that I had not forgotten his earlier sledging of me. In fact, I heaped a plethora of sledges on him and he stared at me like I was insane. Maybe he couldn’t remember that he had started this little tête-à-tête.
In any case, he steadied the ship and batted sensibly – if a little shakily – to get his team home by three wickets. While the game was still alive, Ralph was dropped twice as we failed to land the knock out blow. Ralph was the big wicket. If we had have dismissed him, the last couple of wickets (basically, young kids) would have in all likelihood crumbled under the pressure. As it was, Ralph shepherded his young team mates to the finishing line.
So we lost yet again in a close one and it was hard to take. I kept thinking to myself that if only I had performed my role and batted to at least the fifteen to twenty over mark, I could have contributed some valuable runs, protected the middle order from the swinging ball and helped make a bigger, more defendable total.
It was not to be and we came up short yet again.
My form and confidence have not been so good after Christmas and I need a long stay at the crease to get some confidence back.
See you all next week!
Vic Nicholas
Melbourne
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