Bashers Leisure vs Daredevils 03 April 2016 – Lumberjack

Wooo, the cricket season has started and the omens for the season are already good as the rain has relented and a prozzie tries to give injured captain Truffles and quick fluffing while he waits in line at the seven eleven for fags. She must’ve seen his hand was injured and that he might need some assistance.

There’s no time to relax though as we’ve got the first game of the season to get to. With Birdshit joining the Basher’s injury list along with Captain flufftastic, Leisure were already two men down before the season had begun. Never mind though as there are four new bashers joining the team who would later be christened as Fluffer, Ballerina, Spam and the deliciously named Moist. Explanations later.

At the ground, captain Omega set a miserly boundary and then continued last season’s tradition of losing the toss and we were put in to bat with Truffles umpiring. Opening the batting was Spanner who got us off to a flyer by hitting the first two balls of the innings for 4. He was opening with Fluffer who hung around for 6 mins before leaving a ball which bowled him to go for 1. He came off with the excuse that the umpire must have set his guard to leg not middle.

Captain Omega was putting his faith in the new recruits which saw Ballerina come in next. That faith was duly shat back at him as he also got bowled for 5 bringing in Spam at 3^rd drop. Spanner was still keeping one end going and with Spam they put on another 18 runs before Spanner was also bowled which was due to lack of concentration caused by being puffed out because Spam was only scoring in 2’s. Sir Dick came in next and got himself out for a duck because he had forgotten to wear his box and then Spam got bowled leaving us on 44-5 and with the ignominy of our top four batsmen all getting out bowled.

It was up to the middle order to steady the ship. Omega was now at the crease and played out a maiden to get himself in before building a good partnership with Moist who was getting a good bead on due to all the running. One basher name sorted.

After Omega went for 24, Grilla came in higher up the order than usual and showed that he could be a contender for the team’s all rounder spot when eventually he was the last man out for 20. Moist was out for 21 given LBW by Truffles. Hard on and Tantric came and went for 4 and 2 respectively and Tampon carried his bat for 3 when Grilla got out in the last over caught when pushing for a big finish. Basher’s leisure were 130 all out and had nearly batted all their overs.

In the team talk Omega specifically mentioned to keep the wides down. Ok, we got that one skip. No wides. We won’t let you down.

The early signs were good, Hardon and Grilla bowled well and the Bashers were lively in the field. After 2 overs each from the openers Fluffer stepped up for a bowl and started peppering the batsmen with short stuff so much so they called for helmets to be brought on. It was all a cunning ruse as a couple of balls later Fluffer got one on target and got the batsmen right in the nads making him jump and down like an idiot. Second basher name decided.

It wasn’t until the Daredevils were 66-1 that Bashers got a wicket when Tantric took a blinder of a catch behind the stumps off the bowling off Fluffer and then a couple of overs later Fluffer got another wicket LBW. The game was slipping away from the Bashers though and the reason was the number of extras we were conceding, especially wides. While Omega was bowling accurately and keeping the run rate down the other bowlers were haemorrhaging extras. Spam came on to have his first bowl since 1986, the less said about that the better; and Ballerina earned his name through his bowling action’s high leading arm (three names down).  We got our 3^rd wicket thanks to a run out by Fluffer who was having a good game in the field. By the time Spanner came on to bowl his ‘right arm shit’ we were already well on our way to losing the game.  Moist came on for a bowl towards the end as he was starting to go dry in the field and the winning runs eventually came off a wide. The Daredevils had chased down our total in 15 overs with extras top scoring on 55, of which 41 were wides!! Despite this our fielding was actually not bad.

Naming was done at SRFC and then back to the Camel for fines. Spam’s name came from a tenuous link with him wearing denim shorts. Leisure logic goes like this – Denim was big in the 80’s like the Hoff. The Hoff was in Baywatch with Pamela Anderson. Spam sounds like Pam. Simples. During fines the name was then reverse engineered to a different explanation. Spam can stay on the shelf for 30 years and when you open it up, it is still a bit shit.

In time the meaning behind Spam’s name will probably be forgotten in a haze of pure blonde unlike our bowling figures which have been preserved for all to see for the rest of time thanks to CricHQ.  So let us stick to the positives, at least we got a game, the new Bashers were all good lads and we’ve got the rest of the season to look forward to. Onwards and upwards for Leisure!