A Leisurely Lumberjack – Bashers vs Pudong Power 3rd July

With yet another early start for the Leisure the team assembled themselves at The Camel along with the dregs of Shanghai that were leftover from the Klitschko v Haye fight that had finished a little earlier. To be honest some of the girls hanging around the front looked like they had already gone 10 rounds in the “ring” that night as well.

After we had worked out that Filthy had filled our team with ringers that either didn’t exist or had no intention of actually coming and playing we managed to scrape together a team including Pusher Jr standing in.

Sprits were high after last weeks confidence building performance so a few brewiskies were consumed to ensure that we carried on where we left of last week. We made it to the SRFC after “Elvis” got totally lost downtown for the second week in a row.

With the sun already burning down the debate was weather to take advantage of the cooler morning air or get stuck in and put the runs on the board. The Pusher stepped forward for the toss as stand in skipper and made a good start by winning the toss and decided to field and give The Power the hotter conditions in the field. With Latex taking over warm up duties from Sharapova in her absence, we got loose and ready to get stuck in, however, the Power openers were in somewhat of a rush to get the scoreboard ticking over. None of the bowlers were spared the onslaught and before drinks there was one retired Power batsman and the other opener not far behind.

From the first session of bowling Made In had a stand out over where he went for 20+ and Woodstock was having a little trouble finding the balance between bouncer and orbit. At drinks the Power had pushed onto 98/1 and we had a lot of work to do to keep things under control. Unfortunately, the pace was sustained despite a few wickets coming along the way, which didn’t really do anything to stop the run rate. In the end we bowled out the overs leaving ourselves a solid target of 200 to win.

Thankfully for us Mouse felt he had some unfinished business from the week before, and carried on from where he left of smashing the ball around to all sides of the field. Ganja helped him along and we got off to a solid start. But before too long the wickets started to move with Latex only slightly troubling the scorer and Made In making it a hat trick of ducks, with that kind of form the flight to Columbia can’t come soon enough.

Before long Mouse was retired as he passed the 50 mark and heading back to the shelter of the tent where an iv drip was waiting for him. Some other stuff happened and then when we were facing something like 20 an over to chase them down who else do you want at the crease other than Long Dong to prod and nudge the ball around a bit. To be fair a few more boundaries came but we ended up being 32 short on 168. In hindsight we should have engineered a full collapse just to get mouse back at the crease to finish of smacking the runs up but it wasn’t to be.

Fines were delt with at the ground as Loose had to head of to a swimming pool somewhere to stare at French girls in bikinis. Ganja had to be excused from fines due to our fear of his face exploding due to the combination of the heat and the beer. A good effort on a sweltering day. That takes us to 3-3 for the season and still in the hunt. Next up is the return match against The Power at Dulwich with a number of fresh faces in the team. I will leave it too Woodstock to show them the ways of the Leisure on the bus ride out this Sunday morning.