Village vs Shire Trilogy Part 3 : Preview

No, Yes, No, Yes

Time for another game against Southamptonshire.  In  this season that’s been decimated by the weather, it’s odd that out of 7 games played, 3 will have been against The Shire.  This is making the massive assumption that it doesn’t piss with rain between now at 6.30pm.  We have a two nil lead in matches against them this year but we totally spawned the last meeting, winning by 1 run.  The Village looked like they’d be shorn of their opening attack with both Sarge Saunders and The Jeweller being unavailable but as last minute change of heart from the Probation Service meant that the Jeweller was available after all.  Waiting for the text to say the game is off will be...

1)      Colin Day – The Big Dog has been having sleepless nights over his long duck in his last innings and will want to set the record straight, sponsored by McDonalds

2)      Tom Richards – It’s off having players in the side who are still having growth spurts.  The last time we played, Tom was 5ft 7, now he’s 6ft and his trousers aren’t long enough.

3)      Sean Tongs – It’s the Guru 

4)      Steve Paul – with his early season form just a distant memory, Spaul will be aiming to prove that he can score runs when it really matters on wickets which are a stodgy pile of crap.

5)      Nic Feest – A product of the esteemed Grade 1 Village Academy System will be looking to increase his Village winning streak to 2 matches having debuted in the one run thrashing of today’s opponents

6)      Glen de la Cour – With his holiday about to start, he will no doubt have lost the two stone he said he was going to lose so expect great things from the sprightly fleet-footed keeper-batsman.

7)      Stuart Ward – Wardy has been trying to make his outdoor Village debut for about 6 years and today may just be the day.  He’s from Zimbabwe and never hunted elephants.

8)      Phil Jewell – I can’t play, I can play, I can’t play, I can play.  This kind of behaviour is only tolerated because underneath his mid exterior, the Jeweller is the World’s Hardest Man.

9)      Jonjo Stovell – Which version of the Ginger Magician will turn up today?  Will he get it right and be unplayable or wrong and be like normal.  A second successive Village batting performance where he didn’t use his bat explains his position in the order.

10)   Luke Blackwell – when the names are written in the book, Luke will be above Jonjo in the order.  Coming of age as a bowler as last week we identified the right pace for him to bowl at.  Expect fireworks.

11)   Geoff Edwards – The Boy in the Baselayer is back and will be tieing up one end if we have eight fielders on the leg side.

12)   Barry Shipman – he’s a proper legend

NATS Preview: I Predict It Will Piss Down

There's a longshot prediction in the picture

Beset by unavailability, the selection committee have reached deep into whatever the opposite of a bottomless pit is and come up with the following team for this weeks match against NATS at the Sports Centre.  As usual I am writing this with no enthusiasm as it has been pissing down for days and I'd give this game about a 2% chance of being played.  We have beaten NATS once this season so will be favorites to win, especially with this stellar line up.

1) The Big Dog - fresh from his 6 ball duck last week, the Big Man will be unveiling the sweep shot at every opportunity to counteract the ball along the ground issue.

2) Tommy 49 - promoted back to the top of the order following his scandalous demotion last week

3) Paul McPompey - a realistic Pompey fan but one who you can get a reaction out of if you poke hard enough.  Dunno if he plays cricket but he's in for giggles.

4) The Guru - Nothing to say.  It's the fucking Guru innit?

5) Spaul - returning hero trying to recapture his early season form with bat and ball

6) Wardy - Zimbabwean overseas player now qualified for England on the residency rule.  Legendary runner between the wickets.

7) Skip - Can't physically run between the wickets

8) Shagger Blackwell - fully equipped with lucky pants

9) Sarge Saunders - said he'd only play if Barry was playing cos he's a fucking legend.

10) Barry Shipman - is a fucking legend and an ambassador for Help the Aged.  Well, if Kate McCann can be an ambassador for the Missing Persons Bureau then anything is possible.

11) Jonjo Fourball - Get down in your correct batting position you disgrace.

Village Fail to Get the Joke as the Two Ronnies Strike

The Two Ronnies.... bastards

Billy Shite reporting from Oglands Park where the Mighty Village have defied the weather and are actually playing a game of cricket whilst all over the rest of Southampton, the games are cancelled.  At first glance this looks like an easy fixture for the Village as they are undefeated and their opponents Ordnance Survey have lost every game.  However, armed with the news that their Saturday side has folded, we at the Southern Daily Arse are on the look out for Ronnie Ringer and he’s here in big fashion.  Not such an easy game after all.

The Skip waded out into the middle to look at the pitch, flipped the coin and won and inserted OS into bat, both because the Village bowled a load of shit when defending a target last week and because he himself would have a better chance of not keeping wicket like a twat if he could see the ball as the darkness of last week definitely didn’t help.

The Village were shorn of two of their talents with Spaul having his nose siphoned and Geoff given a one match suspension after his furious reaction of not going to the pub following his spell last week.  Matt Young and Barry Shipman were the talented youngsters called up from the Youth team to replace them.

The Jeweller started in parsimonious fashion, restricting the OS openers to a couple of runs before Sarge Saunders steamed in and clattered the openers stumps.  A good start but it was obvious straight away that the pitch was as wet as Katie Price when she sees a photo opportunity.  The wet pitch was in direct contrast with Sarge who was on fire and new man and one time Village Indoor player Wallis falling lbw for a quacker.  Meanwhile, Barry was a fucking legend as he chased a ball which splashed into an outfield puddle as he was about to swoop down on it like Jonty Rhodes (grandfather).

With five overs gone it was time for the first change and usually it would have been Spaul or Geoff to come on but the Skip took the decision to throw the ball to Tommy 49 after Shagger Blackwell declined citing a bad back and the lack of his lucky pants.  If Tommy has lucky pants then he wasn’t wearing them as OS spanked his arse all over Oglands, exclusively on the leg side as he failed to pitch the ball on the wet green lifeless thing.  It’s a dangerous statement to say that Jonjo couldn’t be worse and in fact he wasn’t but he served up enough big dirty ginger 4-balls in his two over spell to get the score fairly rattling compared with what had gone before.

The Skip took a decision that wasn’t natural to him and painful though it was, he threw the ball to the Big Dog who used guile and cunning to slow things down and a subtle change in pace brought another wicket as he bowled the remaining opener.  The Big Dog had two overs to get through and was as economical as you like until one ball got despatched nearly onto the roof of Debenhams.  Having witness the carnage of the other bowlers, Shagger Blackwell volunteered to put his bad back and his pants on the line and wing down a couple at reduced pace and his two overs proved that this is the pace he should bowl at instead of trying to knock batsmen’s heads off.

Sarge and the Jeweller finished off with one more wicket falling as a push into the covers was seized upon by the Lightning Guru who proved that 1000-1 shots sometimes do come in when his throw hit the top of the stumps to run out the No 4 who had managed to batter his way to 50.  Two Ronnies finished the innings and added a few bonus runs and OS ended up on 107-4 which is not a bad score on this pitch and about 20 more than they should have got.  To describe it as a ‘shithouse’ pitch wouldn’t do it justice as it was like one of those shithouses which has two inches of piss all over the floor.  Would the Village be able to knock off the runs or would they live to regret the overs in the middle when it ran away from them a bit.

With the Mighty Village, it is generally the case that if the Big Dog is grazing for a while then the game would be won.  Ronnie fired in the first over and the Big Dog was watchful but the 6^th ball pitched and shot along the ground to give him no fucking chance and he was bowled.  To be fair to Ronnie, he did apologise – the bastard.  In his next over, Ronnie was no balled by the Skip who was umpiring.  A front foot no ball really leaves no room for complaint as you can’t see when you’re bowling.  It didn’t stop Ronnie chuntering “was that alright?” after his next ball.  “Yes, that one was fine sonny” but the stump mic clearly picked up a muffled “I’d have given a fucking no ball if it wasn’t you twat”.

Matt Young and Tommy 49 were charged with building the innings and this they did but didn’t get full value for their shots by not running hard enough and consistently picking out OS fielders who their Skipper had not only put in the right places (the bastard) but also they were fielding the ball cleanly and putting the pressure on.  11 overs of very good bowling had now passed and the Village were 52-1 so 6 overs remained to get 56 runs… that’s 9.33 an over folks and it’s unlikely.

They were both time the ball well and the Village had a slim chance as long as they stayed together but the alternative approach of both getting out was going to make it nearly impossible as Tommy went caught for 25 and Matt was bowled for 35.  With the Skip deciding not to bat as his ankle had given up supporting his weight and Shagger Blackwell again pulling his lucky pants excuse, in came The Guru and The Jewelller and then out went the Jeweller first ball as he aimed an ungainly heave at a ball that was a bit straight and quick which brought in Jonjo who had scandalously promoted himself up the order from just below Barry Shipman whilst the Skip was out umpiring.  The Guru had a bit of a blaze with a couple of edges through where first slip would have been and a couple of boundaries but trying to belt every ball was only going to end one way and he was…….. to bring in Sarge who in his left handed cacky style, outscored Jonjo by 1-0 who has now batted twice for the Mighty Village this season without using his bat.

The Village limped to a total of 82-5 and finished vanquished by 25 runs and it was a deserved defeat.  OS were better at batting, bowling and fielding and that doesn’t leave a lot else.  In the past couple of matches, the Mighty Village have just about scraped over the line despite being shite for large portions of the game but today they came unstuck and today saw some Indian Justice being dispensed as Kerala moved clear at the top of the league as the Village slipped below Hedge End Jams and down to third.

Next week the Village return to the Centro Dello Sport to play NATS and failing that, it will fuck it down with rain and we can all go to the pub.

Billy Shite, Oglands for the Daily Sporting Arse.

Luke's missing lucky pants - another reason that we lost

Guru Grinds Bladefull into Submission in Run Orgy

Five wickets.... ok, three.

Billy Shite for the Southern Daily Sporting Arse reporting from the Centro Dello Sport where the Mighty Village continue their undefeated Division 3 odyssey against Bladefull.   You would think that like all great sporting theatres, thought would have been given to the infrastructure of the road network around it but alas not – with the M27 at a standstill and Winchester Road having holes and traffic lights all over it, many of the Village players would have needed a police escort to be there on time and so Skip, Big Dog, Spaul and the World’s Nicest Lawyer were late.

Geoff took tossing duties and duly won, so the Village were batting and therefore avoiding fielding with 7 men.  With the Big Dog not yet present, Tommy 49’s opening partner changed from one old codge who steals the strike to another as The Guru was inserted.  The Big Dog and Spaul duly arrived as play started meaning that we were speared the scenario whereby Jonjo has to shoulder arms for 14 overs, batting at number 3.

Tommy 49 and The Guru made a steady start, so steady in fact that the just arriving Skip thought he’d walked into a Test match by accident.  The stodgy piece of shit that had been provided for a wicket was not to Tom’s liking and when combined with the strike stealing Guru and the glaring Big Dog who was slavering expectantly on the boundary, meant that it was only going to end one way and Tommy holed out for 15.

The Big Dog, hurt by the accusations that he couldn’t bat in the middle order, set out to prove the accusations correct with his new blade but connected with the odd full toss which came along to boost the run rate whilst the Guru remained watchful at the other end in a display that will probably appear on his training video for aspiring batsmen, wanting to learn the art of batting in 16 over cricket.

A bowler with what can only be described as a Keegan perm came on and was duly despatched to all parts of Southampton before the Big Dog holed out to bring a tactical switch in the batting order with The Skip promoting himself to give it some long handle, an experiment which was only marginally more successful than putting Jonjo at Number 3 as he departed a few balls later, run out for 4 as he and the Guru attempted to boost the score towards the 100 mark.

The Guru took a single off the first ball to take himself to 50 and the team to 100 and then it was over to Spaul to play proper cricket shots and show us how to do it, but instead he played a wanky French cricket shot as the ball stopped on him and plopped it straight to a fielder in the covers to depart first ball.  Big boy Blackwell came in for the last 4 balls to give it some welly and cashed in in fine fashion to secure a nice little 0 not out with three airshots and a mistimed block back to the bowler.  Awesome stuff and the Mighty Village ended on 100-4.

So, a lower than comfortable score on a stodgy pile of shit but no matter when you have the Jeweller, steaming in off of two yards and bowling one of the openers off his pads with the fifth ball.  Sarge Rob Pace-Battery came steaming in from the other end and plopped one into the turf and got mown for 4 which wouldn’t have happened if Harold Shipman was playing and not being 12th man, watching his son run with very short strides in a vain attempt to cut off the ball.Rob

The Jeweller  came back for his second over and Bladefull already seemed intent on taking chances but picked the wrong fielder in taking a single to Sarge Saunders whose throw at the non-strikers end missed the stumps but hurt Spaul’s hand in comedy fashion and he tried to avoid backing up.  Next ball, the number 3 who was trying to welly it, ignored the fact that Skip had moved Spaul back 30 yards at mid on and made the Skip look like a competent captain by trying to clear him.  Spaul defying his injured hand and taking the catch in a fashion that could at no point be described as comfortable.

Spaul replaced Sarge to give it some right arm wheel and the Skip’s magnificent captaincy worked again and the World’s Nicest Lawyer took a catch off of his first ball to reduce Bladefull to 15-3.  If that bowling change was masterful then the next wasn’t as such.  The over that followed cannot be described here as this may be read before the watershed and some of our readership is of impressionable age and it (the over)can’t be described without using the words ‘wank’, ‘filth’ and ‘cunt’.

With the over that cannot be spoken about out of the way, we can talk about the cricketing school of thought that says that the wicket keeper sets the standard for the fielding effort and if this is true, then it’s no wonder that the Village were shite as the Skip was having a mare behind the timbers.  Twice Spaul beat the batsman, twice it passed over the top of middle stump and twice the ball managed to miss the big Skip shaped lump behind the stumps and go for byes.  Spaul put it down to his ‘magic’ ball whereas everyone else put it down to a fat old wicket-keeper with shit knees.

It was time for the Luke and Jonjo ‘what happens next show’ and what happened was Luke putting down a mixture of the unplayable and the very wide, not helped by an umpire who was distinctly not umpiring wides in the same spirit that the Village did in their innings.  Jonjo, as we know, is the Ginger Magician and he invents new phenomena for a living and his latest is bowling a relatively decent first ball which gets absolutely crunched to the boundary.  Other than that not bad and Luke (refreshed after a week of camping, with a  girl, no Brokeback Mountain jokes please) got his reward and the stumps went all over the place.

The youngsters had got the Village to 14 overs gone and Bladefull needed 25 off of the final two overs to inflict a first defeat of the season on the Village.  There was no danger though as the Skip called on the experience of Sarge Saunders and the Jeweller to close it out.  There was one more wicket as The Jeweller got his reward as a batsman went high and it came down on the very confident Tommy Drop who managed to defy his fielding nickname and hold on in safe fashion and so the Mighty Village won by 19 runs and maintained their 100% record to make it three wins out of three in this rain decimated season.

The Village will have to improve significantly on what, to be quite honest, was a pretty shite performance if they want to avoid some Indian Justice in the final reckoning.  I don’t know how the game ended but on an adjacent pitch, Kerala were playing Hedge End Jams, the division’s other undefeated side and had reduced them to 35-5 chasing 140.  All you can do though is beat what’s in front of you… actually that’s not true as you can get royally fucking hammered by what’s in front of you.  Next in front of the Village are Ordnance Survey who were supposed to be the opposition in the notorious “Stumpgate” game.  If anyone has a set of stumps and bails, stick them in the car.