July 2021
South Liverpool
02/07/21 13:29 Filed in: 2021 Season
LBCC supports Gay Pride Month
The build-up to this hotly anticipated clash was dominated by the foot injury scare for the club’s former leading top LMS run scorer. As he was to put it in his three-thousandth WhatsApp message of the season “No break = been a bit of a wuss and troubled the NHS in a pandemic for no reason; Break = bravely played (twice) with a broken bone, just call me Bert Trautman. Plus excuse to sit down & watch footie.” This ill-conceived bluster ignored the fact that the game fell on a rest day for the Euros. In the event, it the NHS’s precious resources were wasted; but with an eye on the record, the Skipper decided to rest him anyway.
Winning the toss and batting first, the record was duly broken and greeted with rapturous applause. It should be noted that any attempt to repair broken hard drives and resurrect ancient irrelevant non-qualifying runs by the former holder will be classified as gross misconduct; this much was certified when the Skipper bought the third round of post-match ale.
This report would record Rogers’ dismissal as “missing a straight one” but for events later in the innings. The runs not so much flowed as gently accumulated, the rate never quite getting to where it needed to be; but Baxter produced the champagne moment of this season thus far to delight the crowd and run rate became irrelevant. As he stepped inside the line of a length ball he realised had stepped too far and exposed his stumps. Unable to prevent the loss of his wicket by conventional means, he kept two hands on the bat and played a straight bat forward defensive from behind his legs. A cricketing Rabona, if you will. Sadly, the laughter had barely subsided when he holed out to a remarkable catch on the cow-corner boundary.
Prior ran himself out , luscious-locks Chester came to the crease. He scored a run off his first ball, but Brownson was unimpressed by his strike rate and ran him out by yards before he could face another. Power had made the mistake of revealing that he had been forced into borrowing his son’s bat, a Gray Nicholls harrow with the word Maverick on its blade. Incongruous though that may be to his batting style, things looked good as he raced along with a strike rate of 180. Sadly though, his innings came to an end when he was bowled by a ball that pitched on a length and shot along the ground, rather in the mould of Rogers’ demise. Brownson, left to his own devices, smashed the ball hither and thither but his moderate strike rate of 153 did not impress Chester who gave him out run out when many less revengeful umpires might not.
133 did not seem enough, but thoughts turned to Rogers’ 4-19 last week and he was asked to open the bowling with Prior. Recent form having gone to his head, his first over was delivered wearing not just the jumper his Mum knitted for him in 1991 but also his cap, think Boycott in the 1979 World Cup (http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2016/08/geoffrey-boycott-demon-bowler.html). Form is temporary, though, class permanent, as his 1-40 revealed. As the game slipped away, Clarke and Reeve (yes, you read it right, even an over without a wide) pegged South Liverpool back and with 15 balls left they needed 20; this despite Dropsy Prior’s best efforts. Brownson was brought back to clear up the tail but at the end of his over there were 3 required from 10 balls. The game had gone.
The team stayed to enjoy a beer, wondering what Iron Gloves would make of the record gone and no byes recorded against his replacement behind the stumps. Johnno revealed his wedding plans for 2023, causing Chester to reflect on his belated post-child wedding. “My wife was old, we had to get on with it”, he explained. This is what the game is really about.