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.