To Wivenhoe Town Cricket Club!… Shortly after lunch on Saturday. The Second 11 (I think?) were playing Gawd knows who. Wivenhoe were out fielding in the middle under very challenging weather conditions.
There was absolutely no shade in the middle. Fancy that. My first task upon arrival was to find a large parasol and picnic bench in which to park my sweaty backside.
We managed to find a spot that had a slight breeze running over the wicket and towards the clubhouse where we were sitting.
The game itself was in an interesting situation. The scoreboard wasn’t working. It was like watching a game of cricket with pin the tail on the donkey as the rules. A couple of minutes later and the scoreboard flickered into action.
“Come on the Blobber!” rang out around the ground. Blobber blobbed along doing his thing, bowling from the pavilion end for Wivenhoe.
A boundary conversation took place between one of the Wivenhoe fielders and a bloke sitting in his van with the air conditioning on. Meanwhile a batter for Gawd Knows Who was sitting next to us, sparking up his fag.
Wickets were hard to come by. I think this was a combination of the challenging conditions and what like a batting-friendly wicket. It all got a little too much for the umpire in the middle. He took off his sliders and umpired the game wearing his bare feet. The dirty dog.
Finally a breakthrough came for Wivenhoe: one of the openers fell, stranded on 90. Good effort all the same.
The game livened up slightly. One of the Wivenhoe bowlers took a spectacular fielding dive right in front of the pavilion on what is essentially a concrete patch masquerading as grass. His fresh whites were all of a sudden rather dirty.
There was a bit of an “oh shit!” moment when a very young toddler ran on to the pitch. A slight downpour broke out but play carried on.
The conversation around us turned towards one of the very young batsmen waiting to go in for Gawd Knows Who. He showed his more mature teammates a photo on his phone of a rather fetching very young lady. The story goes that he took her out to his Prom on Thursday. By Friday he was dumped. Oh dear.
Soon the young fella was out in the middle. He was making a right old crack of it and getting a scoreboard turning over. A particularly impressive six was met with a shout from one of his teammates back on the boundary of “Her loss, fella!”
The tea break came, more rain followed; with allotment and work commitments a little later on in the day we cut our losses after watching a very enjoyable first innings of cricket.
