The Mighty Village do a Nigella and Saatchi
Billy Shite reporting from the Centro Dello Sport as the Mighty Village Mighty
Village
As per fucking usual though, The Mighty Village had problems
of their own. Two thirds of the Army
representation were missing as Jimmy
Silverspoon was doing all the admin surrounding the reasons for Sergeant
Sunderland’s absence. The Wizard of Ozz
had lent his phone to his parents all week so he wasn’t here and Geoffray
Bentos had been called up by Hants over 60s, despite only being 59. He got in on a technicality as his last three
overs for The Mighty Village went for over 60.
In their stead were the returning Tommy Drop and a first appearance of
the season for Nigel the Thespian who was back after being on tour with the
Moorgreen Amateur Dramatics Society in their musical adaptation of the Jimmy
Savile story.
Skip lost the toss for the 38th match in a row
and so The Village were fielding with their usual 10 fielders arranged in a
circle. The Shire openers were a right
and left hand combination which is always a mare when your Skipper is crap at
setting fields. The lefty looked a bit
like Ian Bell so he was obviously going to get out quickly and the Sherminator
was on his way in the second over as he got an edge to a Spaul delivery and was
snaffled up by The Skip behind the stumps, who surprisingly was keeping up this
seasons good form behind the timbers.
The Shire, including the other opener who scored all the
runs last time, made slow progress in the face of miserly bowling from the
balding star of films such as Twins and Romancing the Stone at one end and
Spaul at the other. Replacing de Vito
after his two over opening salvo was Tommy Drop giving it some leg rip and many
an aimless grope forward was offered by the batsman as it prodigiously spun
away from him. He did clobber one
straight down the ground though and Tiernan showed why he doesn’t have a huge
collection of bravery medals by bending down slower than Geoff would have done
and watching it go for 4. The
incredulous look on his face as he had the piss ripped out of him by the
Village fielders was a sight to see. The
piss taking worked though as in the next Tommy over, the same fielder pulled
out a kind of running, sliding stop, pick up and throw all in one movement
which no one else would have even attempted.
The leggie was making things happen though and off the last
ball of his last over, another nick was well taken by the Skip to dismiss the
batsman who beat the Village on his own last time. The potential game changing bowling tandem of
Big Luke B and Jonjojinge were now doing their stuff and as usual, one was ok
and the other wasn’t. This time it was
the Big Man who was putting it in the right areas and Jonjojinge who wasn’t as
the scoring rate leapt in spite of some inspired fielding effort by Seasick Baz
and Nigel the Thesp who were forming a ring of steel around the leg side,
despite having the same combined age as Mick Jagger and Moses.
The new batsman was struggling to hit the ball off the
square and he was put out of his misery as Skip stumped him off a Big Luke
delivery but for some reason, possibly because he was in, he wasn’t given
out. Back came Danny DV after Jonjo’s
spell had mercifully ended and off his first ball, a flash, an edge and the powerful
No3 who biffed Jonjo all over the leg side had gone as Skip threw up his right
hand and had that look of surprise as he found the ball nestling in it. Big Luke had successfully completed an over
from the other end, marred on by a really crap catching effort by Jonjo who was
obeying the Fox Piss Code Rule#1 of ‘Thou shalt not catch a fellow Ginger’ and
Danny pulled out the unheard of wicket maiden in the last over and three balls
beat the bat before a leg bye, before a clean bowled and a play and miss. The Shire had limped onto 78-4 which was
surely about 20 runs light even on this slightly dodgy wicket.
Any ideas that The Village had of this being a walk in the
park should have been buried after the first two overs as the Big Dog top edged
and was caught mid off and his ginger replacement completed what wasn’t his
best match ever by doing exactly the same thing. It was now the Tommy Tiernan show as they
tried to build the innings but it was slow progress and the run rate required
crept up which was some effort, seeing as it was only a shade under 5 in the
first place.
As the duo began to accelerate, the Army man was bowled for 16 runs that wasn't going to get him ahead of Jimmy Silverspoon in the averages and
the Skip promoted himself ahead of Spaul in the order as they had decreed that
some cross bat was in order. The Skip
informed Tommy that he was going to play his shot and was going to play it
repeatedly which he did and he and Tommy Drop batted beautifully-ish to bring
the Mighty Village within touching distance with just 4 runs needed off of 7
balls but off the last ball of the penultimate over, Tommy was bowled for 32.
A single for the Skip off the first ball and a 2 for Spaul
off the third and so it came to pass that the scores were level with three
balls remaining. Spaul missed the 4th which went to the keeper and
Spaul also missed the penultimate ball and it hit his pads… not out but it was
now a foot race between the bowler and the Skip. Skip had backed the pointy bendy nosed
vice-captain to steer away the winning run and was not backing up as well as he
should have done but he set off, got shot by a sniper in the back of the leg,
collapsed in a particularly ungraceful heap and crashed to the floor in what
was later described by the umpiring Big Dog, as the worst dive he had ever
seen. The general amusement didn’t
really stop when it emerged that The Skip (18) couldn’t get up as his hamstring
had gone so he was helped off and Danny DV came in to face the last ball which
he missed and so Spaul (0) was run out this time and though it felt like a
defeat for the Village, in fact it ended in a tie and The Village are now
officially The new South Africa, with added choke.
Both innings in this match followed a similar pattern of
slow – quick – nothing and a tie was probably a fair result though The Shire
will doubtless be the happier of the two sides as The Mighty Village should
have won and it and the dropped points will doubtless impact them in the final
reckoning. Some positives today with the
expert fielding return of Nigel the Thespian who would be even better if he
could be arsed to play every week and some batting form being shown by Tommy
Drop and The Skip who is now probably out for the season so it’s not worth
taking about the fat tosser.
Next week the Mighty
Village Barbados
after he was given a blood transfusion of Caribbean
origin in an effort to make him bowl fast with the side effect of having a big
cock.
This is Billy Shite at the Centro for the Southern Daily
Arse.
