Far From The MCC
~ Est. in 1998 ~
“Some Things Never Change”
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Sunday 10th May
2009 |
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Result: Lost by 3 Wkts |
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Venue: Brasenose |
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35 overs |
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FFTMCC |
93 ao |
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Nomads of |
94 - 7 |
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A. Darley 2 - 14,
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It
is nice to know that some things never change. Sometimes it is nice to know
that things have changed. And some
times it is nice to know that things will never change. There are things that sometimes will never
change, but it would be nice if they did, and there are some things that
change all the time which you would rather never change. Sometimes when
things change, you wish they hadn’t. Some times some things will change that
you never even knew happened in the first place. In which case, it doesn’t
really matter that they have changed. There are other things that change and
even though they do change, you still don’t know that they are happening.
These things changing hardly ever matter.
Picturesque Brasenose is now home
to the Mad. A
week last Sunday I pondered the view of the Brasenose pavilion outlined by
the setting sun. Having just played on the tarmac like strip in the centre of
the manicured outfield, I thought of how things had changed. “We have
arrived” was one comment from an excited MADster pre-match, “this is a real field of dreams” was actually
muttered by an opening batsman while dreaming, presumably of cricket and not
cobbing demonstrations, prior to the commencement of the game. Have
things changed I thought? A
cry of “Can we just follow someone to the fucking pub.” From a Nomad
frustrated by our directions to the As
if I needed any more proof I turned to find all bar one car had left for the
pub – and that was fully loaded for its trip home to My
eyes turned to the bedraggled, over flowing kit bag left abandoned next to
the pavilion steps. I packed it up, tried half a dozen times to do the zips
up around the bulging contents, heaved a sigh, and then heaved the kit bag
into my car boot on top of the other unused kit bag. I
suppose one thing had changed. Until now I usually only get landed with one
kit bag – now I have two of them. That would go in the ‘Sometimes when things
change, you wish they hadn’t’ category.
Pie-man A. Fisher (batting) makes
a welcome return to the Mad fold. Pre
match drinks returned back to the MAD’s favourite pre match drinking arena,
the We
couldn’t help but agree while watching the youngster cock his leg against the
Geranium pot whilst staring at us quizzically, tongue hanging out of one side
of his mouth. Inspection
of the pitch revealed a surface which we couldn’t really comprehend. It was
flat. It was hard. It didn’t have any green grass on it. Could it be that we
were actually playing on a proper surface? The
toss was won (Daniel not involved) and the Skipper elected, mainly due to the
unseasonable rays beating down, that batting would be the best option. Batting
perhaps would have been the best option but the Skipper (5) decided to show
the best way to fall when slipping on the ice as the innings started and this
really set the scene for his short lived stay at the crease. Both opening
batsmen managed to avoid the opening fines total though, and the Skipper was
not the first to fall.
D. Emerson aims at a floating
head with a moo to the boundary. No,
the first wicket to fall was to prove that something else hadn’t change. Even
though he’s only played for the club for a few matches, A. Darley had been
reading. He paid specific attention to the title of our MAD History and
decided to completely ignore it, becoming the 23rd person to give
D. Edwards (10) out lbw ‘At This Level’, which if not completely in the
spirit of the Sunday game, is always good entertainment. I
myself on the boundary was quick to grasp the situation and immediately
opened up the book on how far the bat would fly, and how many things there
would be wrong about the lbw decision according to the victim. For
the record, the bat flew 32.5 feet, and there were four reasons. Too high,
too far down the pitch, hitting outside off stump AND slipping down leg.
Quite a delivery. For an added bonus, the helmet was also despatched. All
good though – fortunately the kit was all retrieved in time by some helpful
children.
Exclusive TV pictures showing young
Daisy retrieving Dan’s helmet. M.
Westmoreland (5) quickly followed along with JP (2) and T. Smith (3) who both
had trouble adjusting to the auspicious surroundings for different reasons
(and who knows what those reasons were?) A
steady flow of wickets though meant the MAD were eluded a decent total. OK,
the pitch was hard but the ball just didn’t seem to get off the surface and
had even greater trouble getting past the square. Tea
was taken and the thoughts in the Pavilion were that 93 just wasn’t going to
cut the mustard. Spirits were raised though, by said tea, with T. Smith
savouring his first Brasenose egg sandwich like it was a vintage champagne –
and he scored the sandwich 4.1 out of 5 – a most respected sandwich indeed. Upon
resumption of the Match four quick wickets made the MAD suddenly realise that
maybe all was not lost. The first wicket taken by an amazing forward diving
catch by the man with no nickname. JP showed some serious promise of
replacing that other Australian guy (7-0-20-2) and actually managed to bag a
catch early in the game (things do change), and more than backed up by A.
Darley (7-1-14-2) and S. Dobner (7-1-17-2) had the Nomads reeling on 29-4. In
actual fact, we should have fined those three for having remarkably similar bowling
figures. Anyway. The
bowlers found that there were just not enough runs to play with, or not
enough dropped catches to play with, and with
The Mad crèche - fine if you like
blondes…. A
cracking start to the season at Brasenose then, and a resounding speech from
the Skipper post match. We
was robbed (not literally). By
the way, the kit is up for sale on eBay. ‘Hoskers’ |
*
MOTM: S. Dobner’s all-round
display
Champagne Moment: D. Emerson’s
sprawling catch
Buffet Award: D.
Emerson’s