Grouse & Label (Its not even in Berkshire, for Christ’s sake!) vs WELFORD PARK

The perfect recipe for successful cricket apparently begins thusly;

1. Lose two players through a freak incident with a pool cue (one to an eye injury, the other to drive him to hospital for a check up).

2. Win the toss and choose to field with 9 players in the blazing sun against the team lying second in the league (who incidentally, scored a mammoth total very quickly while thrashing us at Welford earlier this season).

If this sounds a little unorthodox, it is only to those unfamiliar with the truly unique workings of Welford Park Cricket Club. The loss of two players, including Nanny, our born-again wicketkeeping star, and Mahesh, last weeks opening bowler, seemed to inspire the rest of us to what can only be described as the best fielding performance of the season so far, and one of the best performances this correspondent has seen since joining Welford over three seasons ago. Far from being intimidated by the mighty Grouse & Label (seriously, what were they thinking..?) batting line up, we set out with no slips and a tight circle either side of the wicket (the lesser known three-four field). Somehow, with some subtle but clever fielding changes and some fantastic seam bowling, we conspired not only to tie down the oppo’s powerful batting line up (despite the lightening outfield), but take wickets steadily with the help of some early seam movement and some solid catching (a phrase rarely used in conjunction with our fielding this year). The Mighty Sloth, while captaining the team with his now legendary mix of animal instinct and well-disguised guile, bowled a devastating spell from the Guildford Road End. Using a difficult wicket to his advantage, he bowled with a mixture of pace and accuracy off his familiar 3 step run up and kept emergency keeper John Westbrook purring with delight. Not wishing to let the skipper get too much farther ahead in the wicket taking aggregates this season, Pradeep, the Sri Lankan Express, bowled his best spell of the season (vicious rumours abound that he had a quiet night in on Friday) and was unlucky to be pipped 5-4 in the wickets column. Even the return to a full compliment of fielders failed to derail the committed fielding display. Bowling unchanged either side of drinks, the Lillee and Thommo of Welford, the Botham and Willis of the Park, tore through the opposition and left Everard, one of their two “gun” batsmen, so frustrated that he could barely muster any resistance to a short one from Pradeep and his flail resulted in a catch at the wicket by the returned Nanny. This made up for his earlier dropping of the same bat off a skier, and meant he was saved from Pradeep going for his other eye with the pool cue. A final farcical run out, and Grouse & Label’s much vaunted batting line-up had capitulated for 103.

Forced to turn around and face fifteen overs before lunch, the Park never took a backwards step, batting with verve and aggression to force early bowling changes as the bowling disappeared to all parts. At lunch the Park were three down for about 80 and flying, and although Monica went for 52 shortly after the break, young Will Herro joined Herro Senior to finish off, even upstaging his Dad with a confident sweep to hit the winning runs. Anyway, that’s about 5 wins on the spin, long may it continue.