St Hilda's Staff

23/09/20 13:15 Filed in: 2013
St Hilda’s staff eleven had to cope with the Liverpool Bar’s win-at-all-costs tactics for this Twenty20 fixture. The Bar had a crack seven – Chester having effortlessly recruited two putative friends, who were to turn up on the following day in the expectation of this being a two-innings match. Step one was to ensure that Harrington Street’s clerks sent Harthan to Watford. Step two was to open the innings with Chester (34 n.o.) and Sinker (26 n.o.), both of whom had to be urged to retire (alas, temporarily). Enter Gorton (23) and Murphy (2). Gorton was to have a key part in the fall of both wickets, indeed in the fall of the only two wickets of the innings. First, he ran out Murphy, who had wrongly assumed himself safe because Kenward was not playing. Second, he got himself caught out. Gorton’s interpretation and application of the tactics were questionable. Tinkler (27 n.o.) and Armstrong (12 n.o.) got stuck in. Tinkler survived being dropped first ball, as is customary. Armstrong smashed the bowling into the allotments with his willow and carbon bat, scattering the Good Lifers as they dug for victory and new potatoes.
 

Anne Whyte took the field for St Hilda’s innings, in case Harthan turned up. Harthan did turn up to see Gorton – desperate to get out of bowling – doing a creditable impersonation of a wicket-keeper, and putting further distance between the captain’s pretensions and the slot of first-choice wicketkeeper. Murphy bowled a keen off-side line, but it took the greater variation of Sinker and Tinkler to get the St Hilda’s innings going. Chester began calmly before his early release method was deemed too dangerous for him to continue.  Armstrong handed his box to Gorton, and threw up a few leg-spinners. He also threw himself down like a German guard in war film, when the ball came whistling through the air towards him on the boundary next to a moving tree. St Hilda’s got rid of Prior’s leg-stump half-volleys, ending on 130 for 6. LBCC – Murphy, Whyte, Prior  - sportingly dropped a few catches in order to engineer this close result. Most of the paying spectators marvelled that the fielders even got near to taking these catches. Those who keenly follow LBCC did not even rate them as chances but as opportunities for athleticism.

  Man of the match: Mark Chester