Bashers Slayers Lumberjack, 18 January

The morning dawned hazy and cold, as Shitshoes, Peking & Messi arrived at the Camel just in time to see Starc claim the first Indian scalp at the MCG before heading off to the Arena. It was an empty & frosty Arena, and we discovered the Hot Dogs were short meaning Malpass & Cummings would play from the Hot Dogs A side. Korean, Sharapova & Long Dong arrived soon after to make up the Bashers Slayers team.

Bashers Slayers 90 vs Hot Dogs 101

Shitshoes won the toss & decided to bat first, so he opened up with Peking for a solid 40 run partnership. Peking was in fine attacking form with some crashing ondrives, & Shitshoes followed up a couple of outs with some big shots to get the runs back. Sharapova & Long Dong followed with a scratchy partnership that started badly with Sharapova out caught, & then bowled in the first over. Messi & Korean finished strongly, with Korean top scoring with 26 runs. Messi was a little unlucky to be caught twice to incredible catches by the Hot Dogs fielders. The Bashers ended up with a competitive 90 run total.

The Hot Dogs began strongly, & Sharapova had a no-ball meltdown, consistently bowling Woodstock style short deliveries in the first third of the pitch. Peking bought the Slayers back into the game with a great spell that included a sharp stumping by Korean. Messi claimed 3 wickets in his over, & then Korean followed it up with another as the Hot Dogs reached 57 after 8 overs (the same as the Slayers). The last Hot Dogs pair of Malpass & Cummings took toll of a couple of shaky overs from Korean and Shitshoes. Long Dong finished with a sharp return catch to end the game, but the Hot Dogs had edged past to win by 11 runs.

Pudong 82 vs Bashers Slayers 87

Robbie, from Pudong, won the toss & decided to bat first. Messi picked up a wicket in the first over, but the Pudong opening pair kept calm & put together an impressive partnership of 45. Shitshoes, Korean & Sharapova claimed 5 wickets in the second partnership to put the brakes on the Pudong runrate. Long Dong finally woke up at the back net & impressively claimed a couple of good catches too! Pudong didn’t take risks in their final partnership, but Long Dong still threaded one through the legs of a batsmen trying to pad up & into the stumps. Messi also finished with a couple of wickets to keep the Pudong total to a middling 82.

The batting order in the second game was kept the same, so Shitshoes & Peking began with a wicketless 43 run partnership. Peking shrugged off a back injury to top score with 24 runs. Long Dong was bowled first ball by the slowest, loopiest long-hop, but then fought back with Sharapova to end the partnership just 3 runs short of the Pudong total. We were feeling confident as Messi & Korean strode in to bat, & the first over put the Bashers in front by 4 runs. Then the game got interesting as the Bashers lost 4 wickets in 5 deliveries (including a Chirag hat-trick). The game see-sawed as runs, dot balls & wickets saw the Bashers drop to 81 with four deliveries left. Messi came through with a 4, & then Korean kept calm to block out the game for a hard fought Bashers win by just 5 runs.

So the Bashers stay near the top of the table with another good weekend. Shitshoes, Peking & Messi headed back to the Camel for a bite to eat & a few quiet drinks, while watching Australia claw their way to victory with an over to spare.