Vs Accountants

The comeback game. Not completely because of injury, but also due to my holiday. But it was still over a month since my last game.

It could have gone horribly wrong, and when I fielded, it often did. But on a pudding pop wicket at Shenley with 10 fielders I took my first 4 wicket haul in the UK. It was part of a 10 over spell with the opposition coming at me at times. Which might explain why I went for 59 runs, although 30 of those runs came in two overs.

It was a fairly handy come back. The result of the game was even better when we won with 1 ball to spare and I was preparing to go out to bat with jeans and a t shirt on after I had already showered and changed when it looked like we would win easy.

The best part of the day had to be the magic Andrew Strauss bat.

One thing I like about London cricket is that you are always playing with someone who has some sort of story about playing against Saqlain Mushtaq or knowing Graham Thorpe’s brother.

In this game we had an injured batsman come out. He played a sweep shot early on that just seemed so effortless as it went to the rope, but the noise was amazing. Two balls later he hit a cover drive even harder, and that is when the murmours started.

“He is using Andrew Strauss’ bat.”
“His mate plays Middlesex 2s”
“That is a proper test bat”.

It was being spoken about as if it was excalbiur.

Next over the guy hit me over my head and into some near by paddock and this was no longer a cricket bat, this was now a myth. Everyone who plays with or against this guy is going to talk about this bat. The sixes will get bigger, there will be stories about how he broke the fingers of cover fielders and how he miss hit sixes for fun.

One over I bowled to him went for only one run, a top edge that with another bat, a regular bat made of wood (not of hope and mythology) probably would have been caught. That over I tamed the beast, but in general, he just smacked the fuck out of the ball.

It was hard to know if he could bat, or whether knowing he had the bat of Andrew Strauss he was transformed into some sort of batting behemoth. Although, when I used Inzi’s bat, for one ball, I couldn’t get the ball through the field, but I did knock back a single.

I’d love to give the bat so a batting dunce just to see if the bat is the key, it certainly became the talk of the game.

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