So, the first game of the season. I can go into a bit more detail of the games for the indoor season as they are a lot shorter. This write up is a couple of weeks after the game, which means I have probably forgotten some details. This is a good thing as I am more than happy to ignore the facts and make up any details that make me feel happy so I feel even less guilty about that if I can’t remember the truth anyhow.

 As I will be commenting on individual performances I will be referring people by an alias to protect the guilty. So the team for this game was;

Quick Single

Mr LBW

Wizard

Weirdly the Wife

Cricketing God

El Gran Capitan 

Team Photo

The Parley team was had a makeup that is not unusual for the lower divisions, a couple of gentlemen that could be described as ‘veterans’ and the rest a bunch of young lads just starting to play with adults. As I went downstairs one of the said young lads greeted me with a ‘Hello Mr Worsdale’, great. I had spent part of last year as his history teacher so he had a good grasp of the development of British democracy. Ah, to feel old…. Parley won the toss and elected to bat.

The Lion Kings (LKs) Captain opened the attack with the left arm guile of the Cricketing God and the tricky medium pace of El Gran Capitan himself. To the surprise and wonder of all present (including himself) Cricketing God bowled a couple of very useful overs, so his captain decided to push it and get him to bowl a third, this was a little more wayward but after the three overs he had only gone for 11 an over – very tidy. El Gran Capitan was not his usual soft shoe shuffle accurate self and went for just over 14s for his 3 – not a disaster mind. The Wizard and MR LBW did not badly followed by the silky loopy off spin of Weirdly the Wife, getting two wickets in his three overs for 36. Parley ended up on 156. Which when look at through my reasoning of 120 is absolute minimum, not really enough, 150 is decent and 180 is good, this put the score smack bang in the ‘game on’ zone.  

Quick Single and Mr LBW opened the batting for the LKs. Quick Single retired, with everyone a bit confused about how he had not managed to run either himself or his batting partner out (he does have form). Mr LBW lost his wicket, well it was plumb really, probably would have hit two thirds up middle. The rest of the batting line up came in and all performed more than up to standard, regularly getting bat on ball into a space, and running well, with a 4 for ‘wall plus a run’ coming regularly. We surprisingly chased the total down in the 11^th over, with eight balls remaining, which for indoor cricket is a lot.

I think the young lads of Parley played well, but were batting and bowling well with ‘proper outdoor’ cricketing technique. This does not work so well indoors. What is a glorious stroke for outdoor cricket ends up bouncing of the wall and coming back to the middle so a run can’t be taken. A good ball outside off for a dot in outdoor cricket becomes a gentle push into a gap for an easy 4 indoors. As they have only ever played other young lads indoors they have not yet developed indoor ‘nous’ so playing a bunch of experienced, decrepit oldies was probably a harder start for them than it look. But these first games are all about learning for them and learn I am sure they will.  

Still one game and one win which means we are well on the way to

Dominating the league as champions

Making a push for promotion

Mid table mediocrity

Fighting our way out of the bottom

Doomed to ignominy  

Next game is up at the weekend with squad rotation happening meaning that half the team has been dropped, no pressure on those coming in…………..