The Rutland Tour
- a Tale of Two Tosses
or "What does it take to get André out of his car?"
or "What does it take to get André out of his car?"
Day 1
So the team arrived safely at the Exeter Arms, Barrowden on a sweltering Saturday
lunchtime. The team consisted of six Rutland veterans plus five new boys.
Consequently we spent most of lunch explaining past events involving the duckpond
to the new boys. The landlord even joined in as he got his photo album out
which features Ben Hamilton in white underpants standing in the duckpond.
Good job he didn't have the camera the year Steve got nil.
The
Barrowden Game - Avoiding the duck
So skipper Needham strode out to the middle, called heads and won the toss.
Hero! Now deciding whether to bat here is normally complicated by such things
as strength of bowling attack, the dampness of the pitch and most importantly
how many beers we had had in the Exeter Arms and the likely rate of consumption
of the rum. Today none of this mattered as it was too effing hot to field
so we batted.
The batting order here is crucial as the duckpond rule dictates that the first
person to get 0 goes in the pond. So without fear skipper Needham stopped
hiding down the order and promoted himself to open with Chris. Needham took
strike and surprised everybody, (particularly himself) by crashing his first
ball through the covers for four. He then edged the next one for four, took
a single to bring Chris onto strike who also crashed his first ball for four.
Two ducks avoided. At the end of the first over it was 13-0 - possibly the
highlight of the season. So then reality checked back in, Needham was bowled
for 17.
That brought the dream team together: Sloman and Peratides. Sloman got off
to a bright start, avoided the duck and then missed a straight one, bowled
for 12. Whoops, two down. Next in André. Well it would have been if
we could have found him. After various shouts of "André where
are you? You're supposed to be batting" we found him asleep in his car
without pads on, oblivious to the fact that we were engaged in a cricket match
and that he was the new favourite for a walk in the duckpond. So whilst we
woke him up, Bloor was promoted to the dizzy heights of No. 4. Barrowden kindly
did not invoke the batsman being timed out rule and Bloor strode out to meet
his fate. He then played his best innings for the Horizontals contributing
8 in a partnership of 24 with Chris.
So with Tom next out in strode the still comatose André. Oh dear! Second
ball straight to mid on - out for a DUCK. Peratides quickly followed leaving
the Horizontals in a predictable mess at 64 for 5 which left Warren and Kendrick
to save the innings which they did with some style with a partnership of 86.
Warren blasted 42, Kendrick finished with 44 not out. There were several sixes,
lots of fours and an umpiring display of such ineptitude that it has to be
recorded here. Gary had scored about 20, went forward to a ball, there was
a noise, the whole team went up and umpire K Leon gave not out. The fielders
were a bit pissed off , Gary stayed put as he was convinced he hit his pad
with the bat. However umpire Leon seeing that there was a danger that the
fielders would no longer like him then called out , "Excuse me batsman,
did you hit that?" I can't report Gary's reply here as I was squirming
at square leg but would guess it was something along the lines of "Of
course I didn't hit it umpire, how nice of you to ask" or maybe it was
"No you f**king twat". Leon and Smart chipped in with a few, Morris
got another duck and it was left to Moore to end the innings in style by going
out to face one ball. He employed the strange tactic of stepping out of the
way to be bowled round his legs for a golden duck. You could hear the collective
sigh of "Oh f**k, Steve's pissed already" from all the Rutland tour
veterans. We were right!.
As usual a fine tea was had and Barrowden set off to chase 174. The skipper
chose to open with Smart and was told to open at the other end with Moore
by Moore. What followed were two extraordinary bowling performances. Smart
won the match with his 5 for 14 off 8 overs. However there was far more entertainment
at the other end where a succession of good balls from Moore were smashed
for six resulting in his 4 overs going for 40. We could see the logic in his
attack style which appeared to be bowl it so wide the batsman couldn't reach
it. This didn't work, as one batsman in particular worked out that reachable
balls would be so rare that he better hit all of them out of the ground. Steve
was relieved of bowling duty and sent out to the field where he spent the
rest of the game shouting at the opposition, his colleagues and most worryingly,
himself. At one point the normally placid Martin Morris ran 60 yards to tell
the skipper to tell him to shut up as he thought any future games might be
in jeopardy.
Back in the real world Barrowden scored quickly but lost wickets regularly,
Ken Leon chipped in with two wickets, Simon and bowling debutant André,
one each. The innings ended with a suicidal run out and that was it; a victory
by 64 runs.
The Dinner
- or avoiding Steve
Pretty uneventful really, good dinner good company, skipper Needham instigated
the fining policy used on the Somerset tour which basically meant that Ken
and Steve had to give up all their money for the benefit of the kitty. The
only thing of note was how quickly some of the new boys cottoned on to the
fact that the one place you didn't want to be at dinner was sitting next to
Steve. Nick Sloman wasn't quite quick enough.
The Duckpond
0 - or more accurately avoiding it.
So we all went back to Barrowden, got out of our cars to watch André
get in the duckpond. However despite repeated coaxing he refused to get out
of his car (again) so we all looked at each other for ten minutes and then
got back in the cars to go to the Witham game. André therefore joins
a list of anti-heroes who having scored nil then refused to go in the duckpond.
I think that the anti-hero list is now Andre, Richard and John Holloway. For
the record the hero list is Ken, Ben Hamilton, David Scally and most notably
Steve Moore. Has anybody else ever done it that I have forgotten?
The Witham
Game- or avoiding doing anything remotely useful on a cricket field
So first thing to note was it was even hotter. Secondly we were ready to go
at 12.45 having agreed with the opposition that we would start at 1pm. However
someone's wife forgot to tell someone's brother so Witham turned up at 2.15
so by that time we were all exceedingly grumpy.
This time Needham called heads and lost. What a tosser- could he please be
sacked. They batted and apart from one wicket in Simon's first over of the
match we then spent what seemed like the next three days watching some bloke
called Matt Webster (yes that was his name) score a century and someone else
get a fifty. In short they scored a lot, (215 - 3) it took ages, we didn't
get many wickets, we got very hot and everyone was a bit pissed off and wanted
to go home.
Off we went for the ever excellent tea and then we began our reply. They warned
me that they were short of bowlers, i.e Neither Tom or Jerry were playing
(their opening bowlers really are usually Tom and Jerry).
Needless to say we responded to the lack of cartoon characters in their bowling
attack with a mickey mouse batting display. Needham set the wrong tone from
the beginning by threatening to declare on 0 for 0 so we could all go home.
The real highlights were limited to :
- A partnership between Nick and Steve Moore
(they sat together at dinner the night before so next year we should get them to room together)- A brilliant 59 from Nick Sloman
- The fact that everyone else had the good sense to get out quickly.
We ended up on 106 all out so lost by 109 runs
So that was it a damm good thrashing and off we went to either the pub or
home. There is always next year.
Tour photographs - Click on one of the thumbnails below for a larger picture
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