Sunday 9th July - Roan Sports Club

This was a twisted fucker of a game.

Saj turned up early for starters, granted, it’s because he was escorted to the ground by ‘the law’ in the guise of The Chancellor. But, it threw a few of us, for sure.

It was also murderously hot.

The pitch was more meadow than cut strip and with cloud cover still around, it felt like nailed-on, bowl-first conditions. Cunners, shitting vigorously on convention’s po-face, elected to bat. He came in mumbling something about wanted to exert scoreboard pressure before promoting The Chancellor to open up with Oliver and in so doing following through for a secondary shit on convention’s now too, too soiled flesh.

Olly swished, hit some, missed one too many. Viv, batting for the first time in 2 years, looked good, but time away from the crease caught up with him. Saj fell early. 54 for 3 and on the cusp of implosion, Elliott grumbled his way to the crease

A stand of 89 followed with Extras now going great guns (52* at the end of the innings), The Chancellor (35) executing authoritative chops through the off-side (can’t see him batting at 10 again) and Elliott (51) going at just above a run a ball.

Their Chinaman bowler – plenty of chat, plenty of fizzing spin, and plenty of bad balls in amongst the chutzpah – caused real problems. Ed batted with real verve and his inventive, frisky 20 kicked us over the 200 mark, which felt competitive.

The Brockley innings was where the fucker twisted and turned.

Their Chinaman bowler creamed the first ball for 4, the third ball for a crisp two and looked for all the world a match-winner.

On the 4^th ball he ran himself out. Never a run.

The Metronome took another 2 quickly and they looked dead and buried.

We hadn’t counted on Proveen, or, the return of Extras to the crease. The former casually and repeatedly wandered up the wicket and twatted boundaries to all parts on the way to a 100, the latter notched up another 35* effortlessly.

For a 15 minute period a Brockley win looked like a dead cert. And, we looked at a complete loss. Skip Cunners turned the game though by tightening the screw at one end with some fine bowling and bringing on Olly, to shake things up.

Just as quickly as they’d built up a head of steam Brockley ground to a shuddering halt with two comedy run-outs (including one from their sub fielder) and wickets for Saj (3) and Skip Cunners (2). Good catches from Fraz and Sam really helped the cause.

Two sets of numbers are worth briefly noting. Firstly, 10 of Brockley’s batsman contributed a total of 49 runs between them. Secondly, Extras scored 89 out of a total of 395 runs scored on the day; way more than ever should be the case.

JE

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