WEEKENDERS PLAY BADLY FOR NO REASON

A ‘biography of inventions’ records this interesting piece of history:

Alexander Graham Bell was born in 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He moved to Ontario, and then to the United States, settling in Boston, before beginning his career as an inventor. Throughout his life, Bell had been interested in the education of deaf people. This interest lead him to invent the microphone and, in 1876, his "electrical speech machine," which we now call a telephone. News of his invention quickly spread throughout the country, even throughout Europe.

Source: http://www.privateline.com/TelephoneHistory/History1.htm

Apparently the news never made it to Suffolk. For if it had, one would have thought that the electrical speech machine might have been utilised to inform a cricket team travelling especially for a match, that said match was cancelled. So it was that a fine collection of Weekenders Cricket Club vehicles were to be seen at 2 pm lined up outside the locked gates of the Pimpernels Cricket Club in what seemed to passers by as a memorial to the Lyons’ Alfa Romeo so tragically lost on the same stretch of road last year. Once established that Saturday would bring no game, the Weekenders had little choice but to bid farewell to debutants, Phil and Neil (each of whom had performed ably at the pub beforehand and more importantly, own cars), and adjourn to the palatial Butterfly Motel at Bury and then a rather ordinary nine holes at the local pitch and putt.

Needless to say, the tour gradually took shape and it had an air of familiarity by about 6 pm. The usual tantrums as to sharing of rooms had come an gone, the plain but pleasant-enough Emily behind the Bar had also come and gone having been replaced by the not-even-plain Becky who was forth-coming with the information that there aren’t any Kebab shops in Bury, “you have to go to Stowmarket. Not a good a place to go out though, pretty rough, I go out there…”. Although it was later revealed that Becky didn’t like kebabs anyway, she likes pizza.

Whilst this rather useful exchange was taking place, the Tour Manager had placed a call to Bury’s own “Executive Travel” for a ride to the pub. Now, none of us looked like an executive, but that certainly didn’t entitle the driver to form this view himself, especially given that he really wanted us to think that this J reg BMW with 168,000 miles was doing us a favour. His “I do a lot of weddings in this car” was met with a mixture of pity and disinterest in the back, whilst Coach went over Executive Travel’s business model in detail in the front highlighting that more cars(or at least another one) and more drivers should make more money. Interestingly, when called later for the return journey, we were told by him that “all our cars are busy”. The good oil was eventually spilled by another driver who somewhat surprisingly scoffed at the obvious competition which Executive Travel offered him claiming that Mr Executive used to work for his company, but no body liked him so he left

During the trip, Hoggers stayed remarkably silent, preparing as, it turns out, for the impromptu pub quiz. Indeed, his afternoon away from the golf course had not been wasted but spent revising the 1985 edition of the Who’s Who Cricket. With a clean sweep on the cards, a crowd gathered with a look of expectation matched only by the look Becky has standing outside a pizza shop in Stowmarket. Unfortunately Hoggers was eventually undone by questions about two chaps, neither of whom it appeared ever played cricket, at least not in 1985.

The morning brought bright sunshine and distended bowels as the product of the evening’s curry sat rather uncomfortably for a number of the team. Indeed, the morning fry up seemed only to compound the problem such that nobody seemed too willing to venture much beyond the fascinating ding dong ping pong battle between South Korea and Sweden for fear of being caught with too much ground to make up.

But a sunny afternoon in Norfolk enabled the team to put the pain of the weekend’s events behind them and the game against the terrific chaps from Garboldisham was underway shortly after 2pm. Skips had rightly convinced Large, the oppo’s skipper to bat and they quickly realized it was the right decision. Coach and Mick Gallagher toiled away with the new ball but were cruelly undone by a combination of big hitting and an absence of anyone better than them who could have bowled instead. With ten overs gone, the signal went to the pavilion to put the Urn on early, apparently they knew what was coming. Maloney was replaced by Hargroves for little result and then Skips managed to pry the phone away from Johnners who agreed to partner Marvel in quite possibly the Weekenders shortest bowling attack. But height and inability can be deceiving and with 9 wickets between them, at least the fixture looked safe. Despite these wickets, we were all in awe of the 3 overs of Neil Saunders, on debut from Coach’s school who is a REAL BOWLER and without a regular team, until now.

Like any innings where the extras top score, the batting was dismal, and but for the shining example of Hargroves and Gallagher, it would have been absolutely tragic. Indeed, the profuse apologies offered in the pub to the oppo for achieving a draw masked our true gratitude to Large and his crew who approached the game in great spirits and, after Skips bought 24 Stellas for their fridge, didn’t seem to mind the result.

STATS

Garboldisham

232 (all out)

Melvin 80.

Maloney 7-0-39-1, Gallagher 9-0-51-0; Hargroves 3-0-28-0; Johnstone 8-1-46-4; M Harvey 12-0-65-5; Saunders 2-0-3-0.

Catches: Hargroves, Hogben, Saunders, Maloney.

Weekenders

157-9

Maloney 15; Hogben 0; Hargroves 36; Johnstone 6; Saunders 0, Meehan 3, Gallagher 37*; Husaini 2; Harvey 7; Vallance 0; d’Inverno 10*; Extras 41.

Bowel movements: d’Inverno 7.

Debuts: Nass’s mates Phil (Saturday) and Chris (Sunday); Coach’s mate Neil (both days).