Pleasure v Doosra Devils (a car crash)

When all the players and the bus are on time at the Camel, it’s a good start. Unfortunately, it may have been the highlight of the Pleasure’s Day!

The bus ride there was great; cheerleaders Aimee Collins and Filthy in attendance; full esky; Tony owning a bar and whinging about a hangover; a bus driver that knew where he was going; everyone in high spirits defying the Sunday 9am start.

The new clubhouse at SRFC provided a fantastic back-drop to what was clearly our best warm-up of the year.

The bowling attack began slowly with Business rejects Woody and Paps delivering line and length…and wides and full tosses. It was all moving a little too slowly for our Captain for the Day, Bada-Bing. After losing the toss (weak as piss), Bada decided to lose the plot and proceeded to mount his high horse, swap the arm band for a shiny new sheriff’s badge, draw both loaded pistolas, and then fire away like a bullied American high-school student with grudge. Really, no-one was safe. His intensity spread like radiation, so great captaincy, as the wickets started to come at regular intervals… unfortunately the boundaries and wides did as well. Excluding the final ball of the innings, the fielding was great, 3s kept to 2s, 2s kept to 1s, all that shit, and Channa’s exuberance in changing position for the switch-hitting Devils was, well, exuberant.

Glenn (like an unwanted child, has yet to be named) took two wickets in a fine spell at first change. In what was to prove less successful than their fielding partnership, the Korean and Conan took ’em on from both ends (one end). Just like the beers at the Big Bamboo, they were ridiculously expensive (free beer Bada) and were replaced with the all Aussie, not-quite pace, attack of Swoop and Omega. The little Ginger Drummer bowled his quota of wides but took 3forFA, and thanks to Channa and Pit-Stops creative keeping, he was unlucky not to get a 5forFA… but he is unlucky to be a ginger too.

If drop catches are the Pleasure’s way of trying to create run-out opportunities, then our run-out chances were plentiful. Woody took a practice attempt before learning it feels much better to take the catch, Chris “Puberty” didn’t learn and dropped two balls, hence Puberty, and The New Sheriff in Town looked bothered by a fly as he repeatedly tried to swat the ball in an average attempt at a catch in first slip. BUT, clearly the “I CAN’T CATCH SHIT IF A JAPANESE HOOKER CRAPPED ALL OVER MY CHEST” award goes to Channa, what the hell was that? A prize winning poet does not have the words to articulate the expression on Mal’s face after you dropped that one, it was classic!

But, we did take some, and “Catches Win Matches!” No, runs do! But, let’s get back to the catches. Korean took his practice catching form into the game in what was the catch of the year, albeit for 10 minutes, when he got horizontal, with only his “Pure Blonde and whatever you can eat for 35RMB at the Camel” guts tickling the new lush turf. Nothing short of spectacular! Pit-Stop joined in, but he wears gloves so not worth any more of a mention. Well worth the mention was Ben’s “Conan” display in the field, for the first one he was at least two feet off the ground proving white men can’t jump, then he read the batsman’s shot from deep square leg to cover 30 metres to “ninjaroll” into another, then he risked limb of not life to dive forward for another, then he defied the Pleasure Law Of Averages by taking what we had now realised is routine for Conan and catching his 4^th.

9 FOR 232…OUCH!!!

Now to the batting…this will not take long.

Omega cemented his Man of the Match performance with a great opening partnership with the top scoring Pit-Stop that had the Pleasure dreaming, but their dismissals was the earthquake that got the tsunami rolling, and from then on it was carnage. We got bowled, we got caught, and we even gave two LBWs and a stumping decision against ourselves… WTF? What we did not get, were nearly enough runs!

10 FOR 130…IN REPLY!!!

We finished an hour early which meant the ice in the esky on the bus had not melted and the VBs would be cold, unfortunately the bus was not there… where do we find these drivers? So, half the team decided to use this fact, and other assorted reasons such as work, exams and marriage as excuse to abandon the team. More beer for the rest of us!

Hopefully, that’s the worst of it and besides needing the Kakadu to hold a relief benefit for the natural disaster that was our season opener, we did all arrive on time… except for The Rock.