Vs Wembley

This game was actually last week before the House of Commons one, but I put that one up first by accident.

What a shithouse game. I came home and whinged the whole way on twitter.

It wasn’t just that we lost, but that we gave it away, again, and I was fucking sore, again.

We bowled first and they had this slogger who tried to hit everything. He had some eye, but he hit everything in the air, so we dropped him 3 times. He was also one of those batsmen who thrived on negative attention, and no matter how much I told people not to give him any, they did, and he prospered. After he made his 60 odd, almost all from the end he was hitting with the wind with, we roped them back in.

But we never truly got on top. Their old West Indian, who I have mentioned before, went to work. This was the third time I’d played against him, and I’m still fucken yet to see him go out. He made another 60 odd not out and guided them to 233ish. I bowled ok, I got a stumping off a guy I floated one up to first ball he faced, he raced at it and tried to sweep. No idea why. Then I got a guy to play on with a wrong’un, which is always awesome. But I still couldn’t get the Old West Indian dude out, and you’d think I’d have worked him out by now. I thought I had him LB when I turned to appeal to their umpire who looked nervous, but he didn’t give it. He said it was going down leg, it wasn’t, but he may have hit it. Then I had him dropped when he was batting with 11. We had the field out and so I would bowl either very quick balls or very slow ones. Off one of the slow ones he tried to bash it over mid wicket, but hit it straight up and our captain, who I trust in the field, didn’t take it.

I can’t complain though, I dropped him at gully a few overs earlier when I was too close. I hadn’t fielded at gully in a while, and when he smashed a full cut shot at me there was not enough time to move and it just clipped the bottom of my fingers. Eventually we got them out.

Then we went out to bat and we didn’t collapse. In fact we were doing ok at 3/100 with two set batsmen in, but they both went out at once and our lower middle order which has looked pretty good fell apart. Myself included. For the second time this year I smashed my first ball against Wembley through the covers for four off a spinner. And for the second time I was out a few balls later on the same score. This time they had the field out on the fence so I thought I word just work them around for a while, so I got a flighted one and just walked past it. It was the first time in my life i’d been stumped off a spinner. And I use my feet a bit, although not as much as some. I just took my fucken eyes off it.

Then our normal number 11, who can bat, came in and did what I should have, he just pounded the spinner and got a 50 while we eneded up about 50 short. It was a good innings, but it also was a wake up that I shouldn’t be fucking around with dinky shots when my best shots are the ones i hit hard anyway.

So we lost, my knee was aching, my hamstring was sore, my fingers were bruised and I felt like like a cunt for my shot.

But my bowling really pissed me off. Yet again I was bowling well, was on top of most of their batsmen, and I still went for about 4 an over and didn’t get more than 2 wickets. Fit or not fit, I can do better than that, and it pisses me off I never do.

2/40 off 9 and 4 fucken runs.