All good things.............
As the days shorten and the football season sadly encroaches further and further into the cricket season it must be said that I will be very reluctant to give up the cricket this year and I cannot wait for it to start next year.


With Qui Vive already having won the pool, this game was academic in terms of the result but nevertheless there was a great deal of enthusiasm to play the game from both sides. I think Qui Vive wanted to gain revenge for the only defeat inflicted upon them this year by my band of gladiators. We all wanted to play the game because of the momentum that seven wins on the trot had generated. Besides it would be good if we could beat the champions for a second time and cement our second place in the pool.
This would also be an opportunity to play on the first field with the electronic scoreboard and perhaps serve up an entertaining game for big crowd that we were all expecting.
By 10.15, I arrived to see some of my teammates were struggling to lay out the mat, this procedure took some time and required that we all performed some very silly dancing steps to iron out all the creases in the mat.
This was also an occasion to welcome back an old member of the fourth team who has recently risen to the dizzy heights of competition in the first team but Marvin Watts’ heart is still with the fourths and the fourths are the team everyone wants to play in this year. Note a phone call from Guido to enquire if he could have a place in the fourth team today. Unfortunately we had to decline his polite request as the arrival of Hans Uiting (whom we all now know as Harry Potter) completed our eleven combatants for the day.
The first order of business was the coin toss. Since I thought I would be boating over the weekend and would arrive late, there were several other tossers who volunteered to toss for me. Given that I had won seven out of eight coin tosses I thought it prudent to refuse these offers of assistance with the toss and just toss myself. Using my trusty Belgian euro, and definitely not the Irish version which was found so tragically wanting last week, I tossed the coin and their captain called heads and down it came tails and that was eight out of nine tosses I had won and we were of course batting because we wanted top beat Qui Vive properly.
Batting order was a little problematic because I did not want to expose my big hitters (Dicky Broggel, Richard Matchett, Marvin Watts and Umer Mohammed) to their opening bowlers too early. So Haney Zaidi and Robert Wolfe opened the batting and Tim Lewis volunteered to go in number three to protect the middle order.
The openers took the score to 21 without loss and just as I was about to congratulate myself for having formed and implemented my plan, it was suddenly in tatters, as 21 without loss very quickly became 21 for 3.
We have evolved as a team, however, and we do not lie down and die, so as the crowd started coming into the ground (well at least Ira and Sean), my big hitters set about rescuing the score. Dicky Broggel made 25, Richard Matchett made 36 and achieved one of his season’s goals of putting a six on the clubhouse roof, Marvin Watts made a very quickfire 45 and Umer Mohammed made 15. Other contributions were Hans Smout (the eight wicket wonderboy) with 9 runs and a cameo by Lodewijk at the end of the innings for 2 runs. We were 189 all out in 33.5 overs.
After another splendid lunch courtesy of Jana and Denise it was time to take to the field. Qui Vive has several quality batsmen but some accurate bowling from Richard Matchett and Hans Smout gave us a perfect start that soon had the run required approaching six an over. So it was time to buy some wickets with Marvin keeping everything under control from one end both Umer and Haney got two wickets each with Marvin and Hans Smout taking some quality catches. At one point the run rate required was up to 9 an over but their skipper took control for a while and brought the rate back down to 5 an over.
With four overs left Qui Vive need 25 to win with 3 wickets in hand. Marvin had two overs left and I decided to take responsibility from the other end.  The Qui Vive captain was making hay so it was important to pin him down. This we did and with two overs left Qui Vive needed 16 runs and then Marvellous Marvin knocked the woodwork all over and their captain was out for 60 an excellent knock. Everything then on the last over they needed nine runs to win with two wickets left. The third team had finished and there was a small but noisy crowd of spectators watching the exciting climax. I confess to dry mouth as I started to bowl that last over so I thought of the cold Heineken as I bowled the first ball then a flash outside the off-stump and Robert Wolfe finally remembered how to keep wicket and the score was 181 for nine. The last pair added two more runs before being run out by tight fielding from Umer and Robert. We had won by six runs – FABULOUS.
Following this there was much imbibitions and eating of samosa’s with the day ending with Richard Matchett congratulating me on my bowling – first time for everything!!

Captain Macdonald