Is there a team the Fields can look to outscore? Quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore!'

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

London Fields 151/3 lost to Tower Ravens 158/2 by 7 runs

Paul ‘Everything in its right place’ Teasdale Reports:

Things didn’t get off to the smoothest of starts on Wednesday night for the first league game of the second league, in the second division of the mid week season as traffic and work commitments meant the club kit couldn’t be picked up by a nameless ‘Idioteque’ shirker giving captain Will ‘A Wolf at the Door’ Isaac the job of balancing about three bags, a set of stumps and 12 juggling monkeys on his bike and race from POPT to Vicky Park for a revised 6.45 start. In the interim, the Fielders already at the ground employed the unorthodox but oft employed warm-up routine of languidly smoking fags whilst watching the opposition, in this case Tower Ravens, bullseye the stumps from 30 yards.

Reduced to 14 overs a side, and with the toss forfeited due to reasons explained above, the Ravens had no hesitation in batting first in the warm evening sunshine with the spooky psych-folk of Bat for Lashes reverberating around the park, probably sending the synesthetic Troy ‘The Tourist’ Utz into a benneton coloured, acid-trail filled hallucination. Opening for the Fields came specialist into the wind bowler Tyrone ‘Knives Out’ Graham who bowled a mix bag of fast, straight, decent stuff and… some other stuff. He did however clean bowl one of the Ravens’ openers with a ravishing beauty and was a bit unlucky with a couple of ‘close’ shouts of leg before.

From the other end and utilizing both the wind and sun at his back Arthur ‘Treefingers’ Smart, bowled a disciplined length getting some tennis ball bounce that held the aggressive batsman Kev largely in check. With the Ravens’ batters less comfortable with the pace taken off the ball, Will replaced Ty with Dave ‘Nude’ Miller who bowled his flat darts, ironically, at a decent pace. Taz almost got an immediate breakthrough with a slashed drive just too high for Dave ‘True Love Waits’ Lane fielding at backward point.

Still, the Raven’s were ticking at about 10 an over thanks largely to good running and the dispatchment of the bad ball to the boundary. On came True Love Waits as a like for like replacement for Treefingers who was unlucky not to get a wicket in his spell. Though he bowled with good flight, the Raven’s began chancing their collective arm and started targeting the tennis courts just behind the midwicket boundary. Troy fielding in the deep, did well to get to a swerving howitzer that he probably saw, heard and smelt but sadly, dropped.

With Tower Ravens finishing on 156 from their allotted over’s with 2 of their batsmen reaching 50, the Fields were left needing roughly 11 an over from their 14. Openers Paul ‘Everything in its right place’ Teasdale and ‘True Love Waits’ needed to get off to a flyer and were going at a decent lick when in a moment of cricketing savagery that Paul Collingwood would have admired, Everything in its right place- who seems to have set himself the target of running out every member of the club this season-called True Love Waits through for an ambitious second leaving him well and truly ‘High and Dry’. Apart from this early aberration, the Fields chased pretty gamely going at about 9 on over off the first 10 with ‘One Shot’ Will employing his er, one shot to good effect. However, with run out specialist Teas retired on 50 and then Treefingers getting a textbook slow yorker early on, the remaining Field’s batsmen were left with quite a lot off not very many. The Fields never-say-die attitude meant lusty blows were struck but inevitably wickets tumbled with the pressure on; Taz’s 6 off the last ball leaving the Fields 7 short of the Raven’s score.

Cue much soul searching, head scratching and later, chin stroking with this being the 6^th midweek loss on the bounce, as some of the defeated players piled into Teas’ toy car, retreating to POTP to rehydrate and display an impressive interest in a range of conversational topics that they know almost nothing about from the merits of historical revisionism concerning the Anzac involvement in WW1 and its implications on the subsequent Ashes results, to how the hell electrons know whether they are a 1 or a 0.

Scorecard to follow...