The Reality

Playing cricket at this level allows average players to participate in a sport that vaguely resembles its professional counterpart. This in turn gives rise to those players sometimes holding an image of themselves and their abilities that is perhaps a little at odds with The Reality. Between matches the batsman will close his eyes and see himself striding down the pitch to lift the fastest bowler in the league back over his head for six. The bowler, in quiet muse will be launching a searing delivery down at the best batsman which destroys all three stumps in a flurry of splinters and sawdust. The Reality can be quite different.

I had personal experience of this in Saturday's match. After a fortnight's break in Spain, I was not feeling in the peak of physical condition. However, in my last match three weeks ago, I had taken two wickets with my last two balls. This meant that my first ball in Saturday's match was a hat-trick ball. What follows, is the scenario being played out in my head, and The Reality.

In my head: Potts is looking motivated here. Despite the two week break he looks in reasonably good shape. He's given the ball by the skipper to open the bowling. His team mates look at him expectantly. They all know what's at stake here. That rare bowling feat of a hat-trick. Mid-off and mid-on give him a respectful nod as he commences running in.

Potts steadily increases pace gazelle-like right up to the crease and slams his foot down hard. His left arm swings over in a blur and the nervous batsman tentatively prods his bat forward. Potts is unlucky. The ball is nigh on unplayable but catches the inside edge and shoots along the ground through square leg for four runs. Potts stands mid-pitch, hands on hips with a rueful smile playing on his lips. Around the ground his team mates give sympathetic applause for an outstanding effort. Dignity maintained.

The Reality: What a lard arse. The ruddy-faced Potts has been away in Spain for two weeks and has clearly enjoyed too many extra helpings of anglicised paella and cheap lager. The usual two opening bowlers are not playing today so Potts benefits with a rare opportunity to start the bowling. How can this guy be on a hat-trick? His team mates look around at each other nervously as his huge bulk begins to wobble towards the bowling crease. He looks a little queasy. The paella and lager swish washing machine fashion around his ample belly.

Potts manages to reach the bowling crease without dying. His arm eventually comes over and the ball hits the deck halfway down the pitch. It's a leg side long hop. The batsman's eyes come out like organ stops and he belts it to square leg where it bounces just in front of the boundary for four.

His team mates give Potts a collective angry stare and Potts himself looks for cracks in the pitch wide enough for him to disappear down.

He realises that only the Grand Canyon will suffice.

Make 'em laugh

Over the years I've seen numerous ways of winning a cricket match, and not all of them have been strictly legitimate. However, I played a central role this week in the discovery of a new way to win. Make 'em laugh!

Here's the background. It was a low scoring game on a terrible wicket. We had dismissed the opposition (Wombourne) fairly quickly and were making horribly slow progress towards our target of 95. Regular blog readers will know that my own talents as a batsman are even less than my talents as a bowler but as we were short of recognised willow wielders, I got promoted up the order to number seven. This was where the fun started.

I got in when we were 78 for 5. This was more precarious than it sounds as we were scraping through at one an over due to the awful unpredictability of the track. At the other end was fourteen years old Richard Kimberlin.

After a decent enough push through the covers for two, everything fell to pieces. For reasons I am still unable to explain, I proceeded to give one of the most ludicrous batting performances that the game of cricket has ever witnessed. It's difficult to describe what happened in cricketing terms because the game has not yet evolved the appropriate language. That may now change. Suffice to say that the opposition were laughing so much, it was seriously impairing their ability to bowl and field properly. It went something like this:

Shot No.1: Imagine a giant spider doing a star jump. Then, at the apex of his leap, he is peppered with a hail of machine gun fire. It looked a bit like that. At this stage, the Wombourne guys were merely incredulous and incomprehending. Fortunately, the ball missed everything.

Opposition comment: "This one needs a bell in the ball"

Shot No. 2: I get a quickish ball fired down the leg side. Remember the song 'Jake the Peg'? Well, my legs were spread wide with my bat directly between forming the 'extra leg'. The ball shot through my legs and we managed to scramble two byes. During the running of the second bye, both of my shoe laces fell undone and my right batting pad came adrift. Some of the fielders are now visibly holding their sides.

Opposition comment: "Bowl him a piano, see if he can play that!"

Umpire comment (This was our own umpire and he was laughing): "Hey Dave. You got a name for that shot?" Perhaps I should have said it was the 'Jake the Peg' shot.

Shot No. 3: My eyes were closed for this one. No foot movement. No elbow movement. Just a limp upturn of the wrists and the bottom of the bat ends up pointing at the heavens. The ball missed everything and the bowler wasn't happy.

Opposition comment (through the laughing): "Christ! What must the rest be like?"

One of the great things about batting with some younger batsmen is their keenness to do well and their willingness to learn. At the end of the over, young Richard approached me and asked for advice on how to play the next over. I just said "Learn from me Richard. Watch everything I do, and make bloody sure you do the opposite."

Richard heeded my advice and carried us through to victory. As for me, well the inevitable happened and I lost my off stump but my eccentric partnership with Richard did carry us through to within three runs of the target. I left the field to raucous laughter from the opposition and my team mates waiting outside the pavilion were bent double.

To cap it all, my earlier bowling performance where I had taken three wickets for nine runs had been incorrectly entered into the book by my own skipper Chris Rudge. The history of Penn Cricket Club will now forever record that on the 8th July 2006, three wickets for nine runs were taken against Wombourne by a Mr. D Perks.

Thanks Rudgie.

Dismissed by Shane Warne!

I must first of all make this absolutely clear. What he said to us was deadly serious. Unambiguous. There was not a hint of irony. He meant exactly what he said.

I speak here of Paddy who is our wicketkeeper and genuinely all round nice chap. He had just been dismissed and had arrived back with those of us who were padded up and waiting to go in.

I've played cricket for twenty years and I don't really think you ever get over that feeling of nervousness before you go in to bat. You look for any piece of advice, or any hint on how to play the bowlers, particularly from those batsmen that have already been out there. You yearn for anything that will give you a little more confidence.

So, Paddy comes over to me and Dev Penn and we both look at him eagerly for some sage words. And this is what we got.

"There's nothing to worry about out there. He's doing nothing at all. All he's doing is bowling exactly like Shane Warne."

I can't speak for Dev, but I was a little concerned. I wondered if it was only me that thought this piece of news wasn't all that good. I reasoned that facing someone who could bowl like the world's leading test wicket taker, the man who has been the scourge of English cricket for the last fifteen years, ought to be a cause for some concern.

So I got out there and Paddy was not wrong. He was spinning it from leg with some ferocity. I played at every delivery in his first over to me and got nowhere near the ball.

Finally, I suffered the same fate as many English batsmen that have tried to master leg spin. After carting him for a six, a couple of fours and some scrambled singles, I top edged a sweep and was caught at backward square leg.

No one could say I hadn't been Warne-d.