Ashurst tomorrow and am just recovering from the Toad’s first annual marathon fielding competition in which you have to do a compulsory fielding session of three hours until it is so dark and cold that you begin to feel very dark and cold yourself. While this is happening, a succession of batsmen and bowlers rush in and out and everything takes on the quality of a dream. Actually, it wasn’t a dream it was the Toad’s inaugural Single Wicket Competition, and was won handsomely in the deepening gloom of Carvers by Alex, although Charlie Pierson made him have to work very hard for it. Congratulations to the both of them and also to Alan Corlett who coped brilliantly with the complex administrative details of the whole thing, in the absence of the absent Howard. One good thing about it was that every batsman had to face two overs, which is about one and a half more than many of us usually face in proper matches!
And talking of proper matches, what about Ashurst then? Possibly the best team we play all season and who we have never beaten. Well, this time we almost did. After 45 overs of excellent bowling and fielding including two brilliant run outs by Alex, two catches by Australian debutante Owen and an orgasmic diving catch by Davie Baldwin (yes, he really made me come!), we had reduced the might of Ashurst to the ignominy of 98 (yes, 98) all out.
With Tim Baldwin and Neil taking us to the dizzy heights of 62 for 1, victory seemed at last within our grasp. Even the Toads with a history of near legendary batting collapses could not lose this one, or could they? The sixties proved to be our major downfall, as it had indeed previously proved to be for such as Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix (and, indeed in many ways your humble editor himself who smoked and ingested much of the milk of human kindness ) Well at least we were in good company then. We stumbled through the sixties like a doomed troop of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam, high on dope, transistors blaring, lost and confused as they crash their way through a Viet Cong infested jungle and gradually, atrociously, lose their young lives.
Yes, we lost all our lives, young and old, and were shot out for 84 and, to make matters worse, hadn’t even got the excuse of being high on dope. We weren’t actually shot, it was more like a sort of abject ritual suicide. Although I would just like to say here that if Tim Baldwin hadn’t got himself out after making a marvellous 54, then the picture might have been different! Just a thought there Tim for the future.
Over post match drinks in yet another bloody pub that thought it was a restaurant, Alex declared Owen and Tim to be joint men of the match, and then it was back to the Railway to drift away on waves of foaming cider to the harmonica-led music of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band (on C.D. not live in the pub as there wouldn’t be enough room for the darts players then).
And so to our midweek daytime fixture against the touring men of Pirbright. This time it was different, our bowling and fielding were not up to the standard of excellence on which we usually pride ourselves. The weather was exceptionally hot and many of us were still suffering from the nightmare exertion of having to move the cast iron New Forest pony defences that seem to get heavier year by year. Nature certainly has a lot to answer for and the price of cricket pitch conservation certainly exacts a huge toll on its human agents. Meanwhile the horses just stare at you with a withering look of contempt.
Eventually, Pirbright reach the daunting total of 183. True to form we soon lose our first wicket but then Mark joins Charlie at the crease and invisible little spaceships of joy begin to descend on Ellingham cricket ground. The little spacemen get out and run around and place little bits of joy in the spaces the spaceships have missed. We become drunk with joy, and Fosters, as our two batsmen take on Pirbright. Charlie is out for 40 odd and Mark carries on to his maiden Toad century ably helped at the end by a few bludgeoning blows by Stuart Wholikesadrink - and we win by about six wickets and get even more drunk and have a barbecue at the Railway and get even more drunk and then go inside and sabotage Quiz Night and get even more drunk and drop glasses on the floor and get even more drunk and go home and straight to bed as the real world re-starts promptly at 7 o clock the next morning , by which time the little silver spaceships will have left for their tiny planet of joy that exists precariously amidst a cold, uncaring universe.