It was such a question that pre-occupied ACC4, new found members of the ZoMi league. There are balls of many kinds and no doubt the mathematicians among will agree the me that the essential character of a ball is that it be round or spherical in nature.

How then can a ball be wide? Surely the spherical nature of a ball would preclude any part of it being wider than any other part. If a ball were to be described as wide then surely it would be ovoid or egg-shaped and therefore not a ball.

Your confusion is understandable dear reader, however, prepare to confounded further because not all balls are wide, just those on the leg-side! Now some of you with anatomical knowledge may be painting a grissly picture such leg-side balls being a product of some brutal surgical procedures involving amputation but this is cannot be so because balls on the stumps are not wide and surely all amputees are familiar with stumps. So there we have our first piece of solid evidence because apparently all balls on the leg-side are wide.

We must, therefore, delve deeper into this wide ball phenomenon to understand its significance but at the risk of confusing you even further I must ask the question are the balls in question nouns or verbs. Is a ball an action or a thing? Well we have concrete evidence that a ball is bowled therefore it is most certainly a noun albeit somewhat abstract. It gets worse though because believe it or not there are many different kinds of balls. There are short balls, bad balls, swinging balls (stop sniggering!!), spinning balls and even no balls and all of these can also be wide balls but the main question that occupies us today is this. How can a good ball also be a wide ball, if not all bad balls are wide balls?

It was at this point that the skipper of ACC4 was forced to concede when he realised that indeed a good ball could be a wide ball and in fact the entire notion of the wide ball was not the product a convoluted mathematical proof but rather dependent entirely on the interpretation of just one man. Therefore, if a wide ball is nothing more than an abstraction, unless it is on the leg-side of course, how could ACC4 have collected more than 50 wide balls? This mystery will have to be left to saints, philosophers and skipper to ponder.

But when you see the skipper you should ask him about his strategy to combat this wide ball phenomenon and he will tell you about the return of the Centurion, Paul Leibenberg, who managed to turn many good balls, bad balls and even some wide balls into lost balls (haha!! 112 not out).

One thing we can agree on was the game between HCC4 and ACC4 was a load of balls;)

Skipper

HCC 4: 213 for 6 off 35 overs

ACC 4: 214 for 4 off 31.4 overs