Vs House of Commons/Lords

I played my second game for the Law Society this week. It could end up being my last game of the year if my hamstring doesn’t get better.

We bowled first in a declaration game, had I known it was a declaration game I might not have shown up. The House of Commons team lost one wicket early on, but then rode their luck and did some clever batting to get on top.

Not on top, on top. But they only lost one wicket, were scoring at about 6 an over before us spinners slowed them down, but we struggled to get the wickets and one of them went on to make a hundred while some others made 40s and 50s. The pitch was made for batting, even though it kept a bit low at times, and all we could do was restrict them, although we had one or two catchers in throughout almost the whole innings.

Being that it was a declaration game, we waited for the declaration. I think the guy made his century at about the 45 over mark, which was about half way through the day, but they kept batting, and batting. They sent out one hitter, he hit one straight down my throat at deep midwicket, but I had to do the whole boundary rope throw in the air thing and being that I had never done that before I just through the ball way too far away and saved 4 runs. Then he went out and they sent out a man in his 70s, at least, then the century maker went out, and they sent out their captain, former Conservative politician Nick Hawkins.

Perhaps because they told me he was a tory, perhaps because I couldn’t believe they had batted beyond 50s overs, I started to sledge him. I started with a rant about how he had no faith in his bowlers, moved onto how this was a 300 track, and then gave him a bit of stick for wanting a bat himself. He just played and missed 4 balls (playing out a wicket maiden). It was odd. I continued to chat as loud as I could, encouraging us to bowl them out as they might never declare. Clapping every play and miss like it was the first over. That sort of shit. We moved the field in with him missing the ball and the other guy looking older than life itself, and the next over he hit a 2 and a single and declared mid over. It was just weird. Apparently he thought they needed 280, I’m not sure how long they would have had to bat with these two at the crease to get that total, but they settled on 240 odd off 53. This meant we had about 35 overs to score this total, needing about 8 an over.

We went along at about 6 or 7 an over for a while, but we lost wickets as well. I came in at number 5, and i played some shots as I do. Yet again I hit my first ball through covers for four. It seems to be a habit I have now, I’d like it to stay forever, because even if you go out soon after you look like you can bat a bit. This time i did bat a bit, I hit a few pull shots for four, and a couple of drives and was seeing the ball pretty well.

Then they brought on a left arm finger spinner, and brought the field up. Now the obvious thing to do is hit him straight or over the leg side, both shots I have played a lot against left arm spinners over the years. But I didn’t do that, instead I wanted the opposition to know how much better than them I was. So I decided to open up and blast the ball through the offside. The first ball this meant bunting a full toss that should have been hit over the trees for six, into the covers for one. Next ball I faced it meant getting bowled.

I’d made 31 (off 20 balls – I do love it when a scorer counts balls). They were 31 of the easiest runs i’d made, the bowling average, the fielding poor, the captain putting himself on the long on boundary as you do when the other team need 8 an over and I had played one whole drive there.

From there we got some cheap runs off the other spinners, the guy who got me out ended up being their best bowler. But we lost our last big hitter who made 38 I think (at a slower rate than I did, this is important information for me). So we shut up shop for the last 10 overs 6 wickets down facing some very poor spin from one end, and good spin from the other.

We ended up about 160 odd off our 36 overs. It was such a shit ending to the game, but their Tory captain thought it was a hard fought draw, the rest of us had to be woken up.

Had he declared between the 45 and 48 over mark it could have been a good game. Instead it was a pointless game of cricket. This game did nothing to warm my feelings to the Conservative party.

31 runs & 6 overs for 17 runs.