23/04/11 - Warnford, Hampshire

This blog was supposed to be a diary of my season. I thought it would help put each game in some sort of context - after years of playing, every game sort of merges into one vague memory of pathetic shots and dropped catches, and perhaps that doesn't help how you play over the course of a season. Seem to have got a bit carried away and written about all sorts of other shite. So, to business:

Making a debut for (yet another) team - since moving to London have played for eight different teams now - friendly cricket is kind of like playing for one big club. Alternatively, it's like the S&M scene - everyone knows everyone else, often with unwanted degrees of intimacy.

Not the worst ground:

That's actually CC out there batting. You probably can't see too well from that picture, but the keeper's standing bloody miles back. Perhaps we should rewind. Fella from CC's main club has very kindly got CC invited to the game, and even more kindly talked CC up a bit as a player so he can get a good go. In retrospect, he probably talked CC up a bit too much, as the skipper looks at him, in front of everyone, and issues the dread words: 'Are you alright to open?'

What CC wants to say: 'Are you fucking mental? Are you quite well in the head?'
What CC says: 'Go on then, let's get the first duck of the season out the way (hearty attempt at sincere laughter).'

CC pads up, a nervous, trembling wreck, his knees shaking and his heart doing 180. Gets outside and smokes 3 fags in a row. Someone chucks him a few balls, and he edges most of them. Skipper walks up to him: 'CC, we've put you at number one - figured you wouldn't mind.'

What CC wants to say: 'Oh, that's just wonderful. One diamond duck coming up (actually what is it for first ball of the season? Platinum?). GAAGH.'
What CC says: 'Great.'

So out to the middle with his partner, a jolly giant who doesn't seem at all perturbed. CC's mate (who's comfortably in the category of Good Cricketer) says he's better than him, so perhaps it's not surprising. Pitch is a proper wicket, with just a tinge of 11.30am (yes, proper cricket) April dew and green that a good bowler could exploit. Umpires are neutrals, in umpiring suits. Opposition look worryingly athletic. This is serious cricket, and CC's about to make an utter tit of himself.

He doesn't even look behind him....he's knows the keeper's somewhere in a neighbouring county. The bowler starts to walk back to his mark. Five minutes later, he's still walking back. CC wants his mummy. Bowler sprints in, with all the boundless enthusiasm and loose-limbedness CC was dreading. And there it is, the first ball's a screaming monster that spits up into CC's rib cage. God knows how, but CC hops up, rides the bounce and gloves it down to fine leg. Stinging pain is supplanted by joy. Not only the first ball avoided, but off the mark! Oh frabjous day!

The first hour of the game goes like this: Bowler 1, it later transpires, plays for Middlesex U-19s. Has something of the Stuart Broads about him. Bowler 2 is his equally nippy mate. CC and opening partner, whom I'll call Big Boy (BB) fight tooth and nail. It's a good pitch and we should be cruising it around, but these guys are very good bowlers, who really know how to nip the new ball in the air and off the seam and keep an absolute cunt of a bouncer in the locker too. CC and BB both eschew the pull shot, knowing with the bounce and pace it's a short route to a top edge at best, dental surgery at worst. CC gets twatted again on the gloves by one absolutely savage bumper which seems to appear around neck height from nowhere, and does very well not to start crying.

Next ball he goes on the cut and slaps it hard but straight to gully, who puts it down. CC begins to think it's his day. In fact, over the course of an hour, his mindset changes utterly. It's perhaps the hardest thing about batting. It's like sharing a head with a lunatic. For the first 30 minutes CC's main train of thought is 'I'm going to die/lose all three stumps.' Slowly, but imperceptibly, this changes to 'These guys are crap. I could hit all this shit for four,' until he's spending every ball telling himself not to take a gigantic hoon at it against the same bowlers who, just a few overs ago, were pitiless Angels of Death.

CC and BB begin to start timing it. The first change is a real bastard too. A tiny bit slower than the previous bowlers (this is deeply relative; he bowls quicker than pretty much everyone in CC's other clubs), he makes up for it with a slingy action that's hard to pick up, a surprisingly fast yorker and another very nasty little bouncer, which later in the game will leave CC's mate with a very, very swollen finger. But in looking for the yorker he sends down his share of half volleys too, and CC starts driving him through the covers and straight. CC discusses the lunatic in his head with BB, for whom it's clearly not so much a problem as a natural state of being - we'd both reached 20 at about the same time, but BB now goes mental and starts smashing it everywhere. As we bring up the hundred, he's closing in on 50 while CC's just got to 30.

If CC had any sense, he'd just roll the strike over and let BB keep smacking it. But that screaming lunatic isn't having that - he doesn't want to see BB bringing up his ton while he makes an undefeated 47 and the other batsmen are sitting in the pavilion wishing he'd get out. The next bowler is a nightmare for someone hoping to tee off, which CC is, even if it means he's actually timing fewer balls than he was before. He bowls medium paced wobbly things with no idea of which direction they're going to wobble. So after a couple of big outswingers CC takes guard a foot outside the crease to negate the swing, which makes the keeper come up to the stumps. Of course the next ball is a hooping inswinger, set off a foot outside leg stump, which flies for four byes. In somewhat comic fashion, this pattern continues for a couple of overs, with the keeper getting increasingly pissed off and CC barely having to play a ball.

Of course in the end he gets CC out, for 32 I think - some decent spinners are lying in wait and would have settled him down, but he takes a giant swipe at one just drifting away and sends it straight up in the air. As it transpires, it works rather well for the team. BB makes 150 (he is dropped 6 times and plays and misses a lot, but when you hit the ball as hard as he does you're always going to get lives), and the others pile in with quick 30s as the pitch begins to lose pace. Stuart Broad comes back and starts bombing everyone with non-stop short balls, but even he's lost some of his threat - we set them 280 odd declared, and CC's done his bit. If it was one of the other clubs CC plays for where stats are rigorously recorded and he hates everyone he'd have stodged out quite a big score, but probably not a great idea to lose friends on debut.

(Apologies for those hoping for a proper match report, but this is my blog and it's all about me, biatches).

When we come out after lunch, CC finds he's taking the new ball. Again, CC's mate has evidently talked him up to get him a go, which is very kind of him, but again CC doesn't quite share his positivity. Not getting splattered everywhere would be a result. In that regard it doesn't go too badly. Five largely unthreatening overs - most balls land on the spot at an extremely pedestrian pace with bugger all swing, and the batsmen show him some respect, possibly because they're openers and value their wickets, possibly because they think if this guy's opening there much be something more to it than sluggish dibblies. There isn't, but just as they're about to work that out CC's been taken off, much to his joy.

No, the pace isn't what you'd call express. A couple of effort balls almost carry through at waist height. There's an edge for four and that's about it - but that's fine, because this is clearly a wicket for the spinners and CC's in the Manoj Prabhaker role, taking shine off the new ball and trying to force a crap shot because the batsmen know there's better to come. If Stuart Broad couldn't get a wicket CC's chances weren't exactly sky-high.

The rest of the game is largely spin-dominated - it seems our skipper has given the pitch some thought and we're packing four really decent tweakers who do most of the work. That said CC's other mate comes on with his medium pace and bowls a great spell - probably the most threatening seam up stuff in the whole game, nipping it in at a tidy pace from a fifth stump line. A kinder umpire would probably have given him a couple of LBWs. Oppo are up against it chasing such a big target, but they can all play and they're in the game most of the way. The game ebbs and flows - one guy takes a hat-trick (all three done with the arm-ball), but even then the opp are still up with the rate. With two wickets left and a guy on about 60 middling absolutely everything, CC is brought back. Feel a little doubtful this is going to go ok after 40-odd overs in the field which has left me as stiff as a Bishop's dick.

Skipper tells him to bowl left-arm over and angle it across, taking the short boundary out of the equation. The first over goes ok until the fourth ball, which the guy pulls straight up in the air...two fielders converge, and put him down. Probably don't need to tell you what happens next over - it's a hoary old tune. CC tries to get it in the blockhole, misses every time, lands it on a good length, and gets swung away for God knows how many (I counted 16, though it felt like 57) by the guy who'd just been dropped. Bang go an economical set of figures.

Fortunately our skipper can bowl (proper nagging, fast, fizzing off spin, wouldn't look out of place in the IPL) and grabs us the last two wickets with an over to go and them 30-odd short. It's a great team performance. But this isn't the venue to talk about that. This is all about me.

First up, it was a great day, and thanks to CC's mate for getting him involved. In terms of performance: not too bad a start. A good cricketer would have clinically worked his way to a few more - 50 perhaps - and then hoped to get lucky on the slog, and he would have nailed the yorker in his second spell. But this is a Crap Cricketer's blog, and for a Crap Cricketer it was ok.