The new covers work. Although just how you get a green patch that big just there, I don't know. It scared Skip so much that he chose NOT to bat!
A very handy side showed up just before 2pm to face Eynsham, who totally bollocked us last year. The amount of bounce that Casper gets is quite amazing for such a little man. He managed to hit someone twice his side on the head. Fortunately it was a child and therefore wearing a helmet. Martin used the variable bounce to his advantage since the conditions were somehow not conducive to swing bowling despite being overcast and slighty humid, enticing the elder of the openers with a very top-edgable ball. That brought a quite hefty fellow to the crease, who presented a bat-hanging edge to debutant Vishnu at slip. Unfortunately, the new boy had apparently seen us play before and thought it was traditional not to hold many catches. Surprisingly, the big guy had the ability to hit the ball to the boundary. Skip tried in vain, repeatedly, to run him out. (Note to all: 'easy' doesn't appear to mean easy in Afrikaans.) The young opener wasn't intimidated by Casper, so we had to bring on boom recruit Tim, who made him look substandard but took quite a while to get him out. At the other end, Sem - having managed to repair the (emotional) scars inflicted by Tony Mc in latex gloves - made us wonder why he isn't in the Kiwis' test team. He removed the large man, and the child that followed him, as well as the next one. Since we'd pretty much dismissed anyone who was going to score runs, it was safe to bring Tony and Raj on. There was no turn in the wicket, which is just as well because they weren't scoring off the straight stuff. Raj got the breakthrough, leaving Tony to remark that everyone except him had got a wicket - clearly forgetting that Casper was playing. Tony did manage to get one. I can't remember how exactly but it must have been caught because even when he hit the stumps the ball wasn't travelling fast enough to dislodge the bails. Casp returned to uproot one of the sticks and Croc got his customary one over at the end. They made 140. Raj thought we fielded well (and he'd know apparently), although the 'keeping was rubbish - 4 dropped catches, 2 missed stumping, 1 missed run out and some byes (sorry, it's not recorded in our book how many, but I think it was at least 3).
Rich had done some in-depth homework on the opposition, even knowing that their extremely tall opening bowler sings both ways. Tony's probing only went as far as discovering that Rich wasn't wearing whites because his girlfriend had forgotten to take them off the line and that she was in Geneva. Raj learnt that ham and cheese do not, in fact, look alike.
Tony volunteered to open (again) but was ignored (again). Instead it was down to Skip and Sem. And Vishnu since Skip didn't last long. According to him, 1 is his lowest score EVER, so there's a beer in it if you fire him next match for a duck. Sem batted aggresively apparently but was out before I returned from doing the dishes so I'm can't really say. Vishnu played a wonderful array of late cuts, while Rich eventually started belting the pies they were chucking. By this point, Tony was bored and wondering how fast our bowlers bowl. Not content with the 60mph that I gave him, he asked umpire Raj and got a response of 42mph. Both Vishnu and Croc were bowled by balls that can best described as being straight (obviously). Sem fired Rich when we were level with the target (sort of - Casp's scoring leaves a lot to be desired), but it was my fault for saying "If Rich gets out now I'm going to bat left-handed." Bit harsh for one's 'teammates' to be appealing, hey Rich? We won by 5 wickets and went to the pub. No doubt they'll bollock us again next year.
AO