5th league game of the season and genuinely one of the most unpleasant experiences ive been through on a cricket pitch in years.
Worth adding we are a 2nd 11 in the lower divs of the surrey championship for context.
We have been struggling with appaling availability all season and its no shock we are bottom of the league when half the team would just about get into the 3's normally. Away at top of the league - relegated from div above last proper season - who are unbeaten and battering everyone. Tried to stay postive when i arrived an hour before the game to see a 2's team with an average age of about 25 warming up and doing batting/fielding drills, so won the toss and batted hoping to stay in the game as long as possible. didnt fancy chasing leather for 50 overs then get skittled in 15.
Before the game started, the home skipper (who had only acknowledged us to toss the coin) demanded that we use their laptop/ipad to score and control the live stream, we declined as we use a scorebook and dont have a scorer the book just gets passed around during the innings, We also didnt want to be responsible for the equipment should something get damaged or go missing. Our refusal was met with aggression and after a couple of minutes of us telling him why we didnt want to, his response was "so your going to do this, every club is doing it" - quick reminder to the level in which we are playing. he was reminded that if he wanted this doing he should have his own scorer and an umpire as well. They were also live streaming the game, but did so without checking we were ok with it or that we had any children in the side.
Ideal start to a game of cricket. The initial chirp from all 11 players quickly turned into abuse after about 3 overs, comments about weight, age, ability, to every batsmen every ball. Every not out decision was met with anger and accusations of cheating. Our ump is a big not outer for both sides every week, but i think their behavior didnt help their case.
In all honesty, they were much better than us so we had no option but to grind with the bat and just survive. it was hard work and i enjoyed the battle with the bat, but scoring was difficult and with the weakest lineup i have had so far this season we couldnt take any risks or we would be skittled - as expected that eventually happened. 78-3 became 98 all out in 49.5 overs. proud of my guys for making them work for it but we just arent good enough to compete with them. Every batsmen was given a send off, even a 14 year old who was last man out. constant digs about us not trying to win the game - not sure what they expected us to do.
All out to try and take a few down with us on the chase, not the best start. without a proper keeper due to our issues the only person with some gloves got the job, and shelled one first ball! only to be told by the batsmen that he was sh!t and was going to regret it. as expected they tee'd off, launching anything loose as far as they could. we took one with us, could at deep cow, again to be told by the outgoing batsmen how sh!t we were and how he'd slapped us everywhere (he only got 20) only took them 13 over to see it off but in all honesty we were glad to get out of there. half of them couldnt be bothered to shake hands, and their skipper quickly disappeared into his team without thanking our ump for doing both ends or offering to buy him a beer out of courtesy.
Some teams need reminding that at our level we are all sh!t, i suspect that they will fall out with quite a few teams this season as our league is very friendly for the most part. hopefully they win the league and our paths dont cross again, we might not be so friendly next time.
Anyway, rant over. onto another week of battling to get a competitive team out
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Topic: Your 2021 Season (Read 78183 times)