Super Cricket Match report 6

To the inner sanctum,

Oh how the mighty have fallen!!! – two weeks ago we were eagerly looking forward to the prospect of defending our crown and now we find ourselves busily enrolling in end of season surfing lessons and trying to get half membership to any golf club that will take us.!! The bubble has burst and reality has set in – we will now all be able to go to the 50 year celebration ball on Saturday night without the daunting prospect of having to front up for a grand final the day after – Ahhh the serenity!!

It would appear that the very demanding and long pre-season, and season proper regime of absolutely no training or commitment whatsoever, has finally come home to bear fruit as the hectic schedule of having to play on 3 consecutive Sundays (two of them over 35 deg) has taken its toll on us all both mentally and physically and we had nothing left in the tank to give in the game that the whole season hinged on!!!

The team was - RPC (Youngy), Ron Pearce, Nicho, Farook Ambrosi, Drummo, WMD (Bernie), Henno, Jack Duck, Neville Hensell (pardon the spelling - NFI), Jack Chubb, Eddie Brosolo, Hilly.

Absent (Among others) – Gerard – Has taken the last loss very personally. After leading us to victory in every game, he has obviously misinterpreted the ruling that when you are Captain and the team loses you must fall on your sword and let someone else captain the team from there after. Gerard thought it meant that he was meant to retire completely!!!. The truth is he has had such a very draining season culminating in his only having 7 disciples front up for the previous game (sadly the Kotzurnator was not one of them!!) and as the final straw to his season he had to deal with the prospect of the author backstopping for 10 overs and Henno having to bowl first change!!! No man could be expected to cope with such trauma as that that and come through mentally unscathed – We are confident that the winter will allow him to re-group and come back re-vitalised!!!

Ducky – “Club legends only play finals, and only under 28 degrees, and it is up to the other mere mortals to get me there!!”
Starry – “Cricket is to be avoided at all costs” AD – By playing for us last game, finally realised his childhood dream of playing in all grades for the club in one season and now feels he has nothing left to achieve!!
Chuck - Our new “red ink” specialist and refusing to play unless he is promoted from the No 11 to the coveted No 10 spot in the batting order – In the words of Daryl Kerrigan in the iconic Australian movie “The Castle” – “He’s dreaming!!”
Wighto – After 6 hours has given up his ill fated hunger strike (was starting to feel hungry) he was waging in attempt to persuade the ICC to reverse their decision in refusing to make him exempt from ever being given out LBW again. He is now trying to drum up support by organising a marathon walk from “Sweethearts Pizza” in Dean St across the road to “Daisy’s Baked Potatoes” in the old Ritz arcade. You can support Wighto in his cause to try and right what he considers to be a totally unjust wrong by joining him on the walk any time after 3.30 am on most Saturday nights!! Frank – Rotated (only one “o “ in rotated ) – for the first time in the history of our proud veterans team we had one extra player to choose from – Frank was the logical choice as he is looking decidedly tired after a very long and hectic season of playing on Sundays and then fronting up to do the remedial brickwork for all of the surrounding houses to the grounds on the ensuing days when Nicho, Drummo, Henno, Dallas, WMD, and Jack have been bowling!!!
“The Kotzurnator” TM – In what is a worrying trend and appears to make a mockery of the long held theory that “the game is bigger than the individual”– we only lost the two games for the season in which Dallas did not play for us!! Having achieved so much for, and with us this season, and culminating in his ill-fated national selection for the previous game which saw him miss his connecting flight to join the Aussies in NZ, but instead somehow ended up in Saudi Arabia, Dallas has decided that because his papers have now been marked “never to f**king tour again!!” his future may lie in other directions!!

So on the Saturday night before our season defining game when everyone else in the team was out on the town having “all-nighters” and drinking copious amounts of alcohol to settle their pre-match nerves, where was our match winner, cult figure, and spiritual leader????? – Playing fullback for bloody Queensland in a veterans AFL match in Cairns as a Curtain raiser for the St. Kilda/ Brisbane Lions AFL match!!!!! – (you will note it was a night match). Apart from arriving at the correct ground, correctly attired, and before the scheduled commencement of a match, is there anything that our star all-rounder can’t do?!?!

The way soccer has taken off here since the world cup, it wouldn’t surprise us at all if Dallas were to have a crack at it and there is every chance with his all-round talent he could conceivably become a Socceroo just in time for the next World Cup. You could just picture the future scene just like the famous and unforgettable qualifier in Melbourne last year when the Aussies won in a penalty shoot-out.

The 2010 game is a sell-out at the MCG, Australia playing the heavyweight Argentina and needing a win to qualify for the World Cup dream again. The score is locked at 1 all after extra time and the penalty shootout is underway, and is tied at 4 all and Dallas steps up to the penalty spot and the chance to win it with the hopes of an entire nation, a veterans cricket team in Albury, and a television audience of millions around the world watching him. (it should be noted that Dallas is actually only involved in the penalty shoot-out this day because, unfortunately, he was meant to be in the starting line-up, but was late arriving to the match as he had gone to Telstra Dome as he thought that was where he was meant to be playing!!)

He places the ball on the spot, goes back picks his mark that he intends to put the ball into the net, (top left hand corner) starts his run-up, suddenly stumbles and trips about 3 paces from the ball, as he is heading downwards towards a very embarrassing landing, his right foot somehow makes minimal contact with the ball (he is a natural left-footer) as Dallas’ arms and legs are going everywhere. The poor old goal-keeper was completely put off by this and dived full stretch to his right as that is where he guessed it was going. As the keeper lays sprawled out on side of the net he could only watch on in horror as the ball quietly dribbled along the ground into the opposite corner of the net!!!! The stadium erupts with 110,000 delirious fans going into raptures, Dallas climbs to his feet and starts doing a fast lap of the ground with his shirt off and his team-mates in hot pursuit, with the commentator screaming “Kotzureeesseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!” and a new national hero is born!! – Don’t ever underestimate him - It could happen!

( Footnote – The latest report coming from Cairns today is that after hosting our beloved “Kotzurnator” and his “Chip off the old block” son Jayden for the weekend, the City of Cairns expects to be able to resume normal operations on May 19 and re-open it’s tourist trade in August 2012!!!!! )

To the game – Our new (and revered) captain Youngy duly lost the toss which saw us bowl first against what transpired to be probably the most technically correct and talented batting line-up we had encountered for the whole season.

RPC bowled exceptionally well without any luck and new secret weapon Neville, who made the fatal mistake of sticking his nose into the changerooms pre-match and saying g’day whilst attending a junior footy rego morning with his sons, opened impressively from the other end.

As usual, everyone bowled pretty well and New City through very good batting were able to post a score of 165. The wickets were shared pretty evenly.

Highlight of the bowling was Henno who was struggling to find a length anywhere in between much too full and much too short, let fly with a slow knee high full toss which saw the batsman inexplicably deceived and lose his off stump. As the batsman trudged off and we all tried to comprehend how he could have missed it – Jack piped up with what seemed the perfect explanation – “the BAT saw the ball coming and suddenly realised the pain it was about to feel and instinctively ducked!!!

Whilst our bowling was quite solid I think it would be fair to say that our fielding was what ultimately cost us the match as we missed several straight forward chances which the batsmen capitalized on fully. One could almost think that the prospect of potentially having to play the final on the morning after the re-union ball was playing very heavily on our minds!!.

I think it would be fair to say that over the years we have all occasionally experienced “one of those days” or a “character building” day (sadly some of us seem to have one of them every time we play cricket!!!) . I think you would get little argument from anyone that our very gritty, extremely proud, and fiercely determined “weekend worrier” (not to be confused with “”Warrior”) Nicho had one of those days on Sunday!!. His normally very steady bowling went wicketless and “blew the budget” as far as runs conceded went. Then it further compounded with him missing a fairly straightforward run-out followed up by a couple of outfield catches that he may well have “slightly” misjudged and would normally have swallowed. His day didn’t get any better when the batting came around – told he would be opening the batting as usual, he was padded up in the rooms extolling his views to a couple of team-mates on David Hicks, the latest gossip from “Home and Away” , and World Peace when it was suddenly bought to his attention that the innings had commenced without him!!!!

On arriving to the rest of the team under the shelter he queried RPC as to what he had done to upset him to suddenly demote him in the batting order. Youngy, always the diplomat, said that the umpire and opposition had simply got sick of waiting for him to come out of the rooms!!!! When he finally got his chance at the wicket – he etched out a couple of runs and then got an absolute brute of a ball which was a slow half-tracker pitched 2 feet outside off stump which he rightly tried to deposit into the car-park but only successfully managed to get a thick edge through to the keeper. – His day was complete!!!. However, it wasn’t a complete waste for him, as after such a torrid day for him, we unanimously decided to refund him his ball fees!!! His trauma counselling is expected to continue well into the winter months…………………..

Stop Press!! – As I write this I have just received a call from Nicho who was somewhat sheepish but at the same time relieved – he had obviously gone home from the match and did a lot of soul-searching and performance analysis to find out where he went wrong and had finally come up with the answer to explain his tough day ..You will probably all remember in the game against Raiders recently when he got hit on the helmet whilst batting which caused him to lose his bat, spectacles, hearing aids , false teeth and also blew the fuse in his pacemaker- well apparently his spectacles were damaged in the mishap. Now Nicho being the resourceful character that he is, decided that he would try and save some money by repairing them himself. Unfortunately for Nicho, he had inadvertently glued the lenses back into the frame the wrong way around which was obviously giving him “a different point of view” !!!! He only realised it after he had spent three hours trying to get his key into the front door at his house when he arrived home after the game!!

They talk about “out of the mouths of babes” - we were all sitting around waiting our turn to bat and Henno’s younger son piped up with a perfectly innocent and legitimate question - “hey dad, what is your best ever score in cricket???” - to which Henno proudly replied “72” There was a short silence and then his son asked “well how come you can’t ever seem to do that any more????” (It took at least 5 minutes before everyone had regained their composure!!) Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of the mental disintegration for Henno – He went out to bat near the end on a hiding to nothing as we needed quick runs in a short time – made half a dozen or so and was dismissed. As he arrived back under the shelter where we all were, his son went over to him and said – “oh well dad, at least you got a wicket!!!” (this time it took us 10 minutes to regain our composure!!) Henno was last heard muttering to his son that he should come over here with him and sit down!! – Could all of you please all watch “Missing Persons Unit” on TV in the coming weeks as they may well be asking for info about a young boy who went missing after attending a veterans cricket match with his father in Albury!!!

Another guy on a hiding to nothing was Jack Chubb who went in with three balls to go and 12 to get – As he left the shelter, someone said “Good luck Jack, have a good look at the bowling whist you are walking out to the middle and then get into them!!” Because Nicho was still in the rooms giving his “address to the nation” when the innings was due to commence, we opened up with Neville and Jack which got us off to a good start.

Neville played a couple of very good shots which showed his undoubted all-round talent and we now think that we will schedule a junior footy rego morning every time we play next summer in the hope that Neville will turn up and fill in for us. Jack batted exceptionally well as usual and compiled a very good 30 before his compulsory retirement.

Ron Pearce chipped in with a few and Farook Ambrosi was also solid as usual. (the jury is still out on Farook – he was initially dubbed this after the former famous Indian wicket-keeper and opening batsman of years gone by, Farook Engineer. Although it is fair to say that Jeff is a very popular and vital member of our team, there are those within the ranks who think he is also very much like the “Farook” (Daryl Kerrigan’s neighbour) in “The Castle” (the one who wears bib and brace overalls and wants to blow everyone up!!) If Jeff ever turns up in white bib and brace overalls to play – don’t mess with him!!

The departure of Farook bought WMD (Bernie) to the wicket to bat with the author. Sadly for Bernie, he received an absolute brute of a ball that we all hate to receive first up – a slow medium shin-high full toss just outside leg stump!! – which he duly hit straight to the guy standing beside the square leg umpire to end his innings. As WMD trudged off a shattered man he was greeted at the boundary by the incoming batsman Youngy who had strained his hamstring whilst fielding and required a runner, so he nominated Bernie to do it for him. Just what Bernie needed !!! – you take the long walk to the centre, get a first ball duck, take the even longer walk back to the boundary in total embarrassment, then you have to turn around and walk back out to the centre to face the opposition who had just humiliated you and then run up and down the pitch for somebody else!!!!!!!!!! “Bloody fanf**kingtastic!!!!” he was heard to mutter.

Now at this point I think I should raise an issue that the ICC should really address as it seriously needs to be looked at. The issue is whether it is in the best interests of the game that fast bowlers be allowed to bat with a runner!!! If the ICC (foolishly in my opinion) still insist that it is o.k. for this to continue, then they at least need to make it a rule that if a fast bowler is to be able to bat with a runner then under no circumstances whatsoever is the runner allowed to be another fast bowler!!!!!!!!!

So here is the situation in what is a fairly tight game situation – The incoming batsman is a fast bowler carrying a hamstring and quietly seething because the opposition wouldn’t let him smoke his cigars whilst at the non-strikers end, and the umpire also refused to hold his Crownie whilst he was on strike!!, his runner is another relatively inexperienced fast bowler who has never acted as a runner before and is back in the centre 2 minutes after getting a first ball duck and really doesn’t want to be there, and the batsman at the other end is still carrying the enormous mental scars of “the incident” earlier in the season which saw our club living legend run-out in what was really a very unfortunate, but nevertheless humane dismissal, that was clearly in Ducky’s best interests at the time!!!. If that is not a lethal cocktail for a severe dose of Keystone Cops entertainment then nothing is!!!

The ensuing chaos would have been an absolute monty to win “Funniest Home Videos” if someone would have recorded it. I can assure you readers that it is a very disconcerting feeling and unsettling sight to have on no less than six occasions ,Youngy on strike and dispatching a ball for a run or runs, me calling Bernie through from his position at square leg and then passing a very heavily limping Youngy mid-pitch on his way to the non-strikers end as well!! Naturally, the completely disorientated, confused, and flustered Youngy responded very well to our frantic calls of “Get f**king back Youngy!!!- you’re not f**king allowed to be running!!!” At this mid-pitch point the colour would immediately drain from Youngy’s face, he would let out a few expletives (mainly involving fire trucks of some description) and proceed to frantically turn around in a turning circle similar to the Queen Mary which was in Sydney harbour recently, and desperately scramble his way back to the crease and no doubt doing further damage his dodgy leg.!!! It got to the stage that Youngy had absolutely no idea where to go after each delivery and at one stage he even asked the central umpire for “2 centres” whilst standing beside the square leg umpire!!!

Bernie was doing his best and he also had absolutely no idea what was going on and in the end just ran like buggery when ever someone (anyone) called out “Yes”. At one stage we were changing ends between overs and were having a 3 way chat in the middle and the slips fielder and keeper wandered past and the keeper said to the slipper “are you going for a beer after the match??” to which the slipper said “yes” which caused Bernie to immediately make a frantic dash to the non-strikers end and Youngy to pause mid sentence, fiercely mention a couple more fire trucks and desperately hobble back to the strikers end!!!

By this stage the author had developed a pretty severe nervous twitch!!! It was at some stage during this debacle I had come to realise that this must have been a similar type of situation that had previously lead to original penning of the famous quote- “If you can remain calm and keep your head whilst others around you are losing theirs – then you obviously have no bloody idea whatsoever of the gravity of the situation!!!”

At this point I think I should make mention of the good sportsmanship of the New City boys in choosing not to appeal against Youngy continually setting off for runs despite his having a runner – it was a tight game and they would have been well within their rights to do so and I think it was a great reflection on the spirit in which the game was played between the two teams that they didn’t. Besides, where else would they have got such high class entertainment for such a low admission price!!

Ultimately, the author did perish by way of a run-out but it was in the desperate search for quick runs in the final overs and ironically was in no-way connected with a mix-up. Having said that – what a relief it was to get out of there!!!!

Youngy lost his off stump soon after and he and a totally exhausted Bernie made their way off the ground. Bernie had set some sort of record out there – he had been out in the middle for 45 minutes and only faced 1 ball !!!!!!!!

So we disappointingly lost by about 6 runs in a very hard-fought but enjoyable match in which the players from both teams obviously play for all of the right reasons.

Sadly, the season is now over for us and we can all rest our old and weary bodies, and look forward to the footy season and hope that our own Daniel Cross can kick a 95 metre left foot torpedo after the final siren for the Doggies to beat Collingwood by a point in this years AFL Grand Final !!– now that would be good Karma!!

Once again, thanks to Jack on behalf of everyone for his great efforts in trying to put together a team each week – It was often a very challenging, frustrating, and thankless task, but I can assure you we all appreciate it. I think you would all agree that it is a rare privilege to play cricket with such a good bunch of fun-loving and entertaining “old blokes” who should know better, but all share an obvious deep love and respect for the values of this great game that has been part of our lives for so many years.

Ripley

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