Village Choke as Last Three Balls Yield 2 run outs,1 snapped hamstring and and 0 runs.

The Mighty Village do a Nigella and Saatchi

Billy Shite reporting from the Centro Dello Sport as the Mighty Village look for their 5^th league win in a row against Southamptonshire who to the surprise of many, mainly their skipper, turned the Village over in the 2^nd game of the season.  Said Skipper, inventor and chief exponent of the Worty Shuffle was absent tonight which would surely give the Mighty Village the edge as they sought revenge for the aforementioned defeat.

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 38^th 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 4^th 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 are back at the Centro Dello Sport to play B&Q and rumour has it that they will have a proper wicket keeper with the return of Jimmy Silverspoon to don the gloves.  Rumour also has it that Sergeant Sunderland will be back and renamed Sergeant 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.