Leisure vs Dulwich Lumberjack for 2 June 2013

Just like the Kiwi cricketers in the UK (note that point Genghis), the Leisure made it two wins in a row on the weekend by demolishing the luckless Dulwich side at Dulwich.

WARM-UPS
Things weren’t all easy as Dags had to talk his way past the suspicious A-yi at the back door just to get into the Camel for the pies and kitbag. Sadly the pie box was later placed over an ant nest and supplied a multitude of the little buggers with food for coming winters. Special mention should be made of Dot, who answered the team call and arrived with a box of water bottles (no refreshments at Dulwich). Dags won the toss, and put Dulwich in to bat, or at least, that’s what he told us. Dulwich walked out as if to field, and so Dags needed a follow-up meeting to clarify that the Leisure would indeed be fielding first. The Jaguar would have cringed to see the Leisure out-dressed by the Dulwich Knights (all sporting their fancy new shirts): young Satchel was in black shorts (men’s clothes being too big), Dot was too lazy to change into his white trousers even though they were in his bag, and the newbie Pigu didn’t have a single item of Bashers attire. Scooby led a short but efficient catching practice, and it must have worked, because for the second week in a row, no catches were dropped by the Leisure in the field.

FIELDING
Woody opened up the bowling with Dot in a good opening spell. The Dulwich batsmen were contained, and Dot picked up a LBW in his second over. The young prodigy, Satchel, then proceded to demolish the Dulwich scorecard – picking up a personal best 3/11 off his 4 overs (including a wicket maiden). This prompted laments from the Dulwich captain/wicket-keeper/Cranky’s BFF – who, after being bowled out cheaply, was heard to say “it’s all the training he gets here at Dulwich, he should be playing for us!” – sad words from a disappointed man. Mule also came into the attack strongly and picked up a couple of wickets for the second match in a row, extracting good swing towards the slips. Special mention needs to be made of a sliding dive catch by Scooby in complete disregard for the safety of his limbs (and his dark shades). Dags bowled an over, and then took a catch off Tantric’s first delivery, which kept the Leisure on top of things. Pigu came on and bowled with such blistering pace that the batsmen were often jumping back off the pitch to escape it. The umpire called a wide to one delivery that narrowly missed leg stump, and passed between the retreating batsmen and the wickets, which almost caused dissent from Pigu, especially when the umpire followed it up with a “you must be stupid to question that call” look. Pigu then directed his anger instead on the stand-in wicket-keeper of the day, Spanner, by almost shattering one of his fingers. The replacement keeper Scooby did a reasonable job standing back preventing any byes off Tantric and Shitshoes, causing Korean to later note that “with a regular keeper Shoes could’ve had four or five stumpings today”. What has happened to the regular Leisure keepers lately? At any rate, Shitshoes recovered from having a strong appeal for an edge to the keeper turned down, to have the same batsmen caught by Pigu running back at midwicket. Tantric came on and got another wicket, and then tried to bounce the 10-year old – hitting him in the helmet grill or perhaps it was the bat handle that hit the grill – it is difficult to confirm because Scooby was half way to the boundary. Dulwich ended with 94/9 off their 20 overs.

BATTING
The Bashers got the momentum early as Shitshoes dispatched the first and fourth deliveries of the opening over to the boundary. Unfortunately in the 4th over he missed one and was given out LBW to the one-step-wonder bowling mystery deliveries. Mouse was distracted by his wailing son on the boundary rope and was also given out LBW, and Spanner lasted only long enough for one smashing boundary. That bought Pigu and Scooby to the crease for a significant partnership of 70 odd runs that took the Leisure home with 7 wickets and the best part of 8 overs to spare. Pigu was particularly aggressive, even playing some real cricket shots, and that encouraged Scooby to treat the bowlers with a similar level of respect – the result being that 15 runs off an over became commonplace and the Bashers cruised to victory.

Pigu plays a shot last seen for the Leisure in mid-2010.

The worst dressed Leisure line-up for some time is definitely missing the Jaguar.

CELEBRATIONS
The celebrations are really the Leisure’s strongest skillset, and with a win by 11.30am, the celebrations started early and lasted long. Once on the bus Woodstock dispensed the “Celt” beers with a high degree of efficiency and skill. The box was produced and Pigu was welcomed into the Bashers – with an appropriate Chinese Basher name meaning “Full of Shit” (see Dags for confirmation of this translation) for his ridiculously humble appraisal of his cricketing abilities. The awful “Celt” beers continued to enduce winces and mutterings the entire bus trip back to the Camel, where a few buckets of Crown and some Sunday roasts soon had smiles on the Leisure’s faces once again. After a positive fines session (nobody could really supply “negative” fines or many fines at all thanks to the consumption of the “Celts”), and the arrival of Fruitbox (to strongly deny coming from the same place in the UK as Pigu), the Leisure eased off into the last remaining hours of the weekend, but an assortment of WeChat messages from Mouse confirmed that he continued celebrations late into the evening at home, although the recorded voice messages will take some time to decipher. Messages of support and general insults were also sent in by Loose, who was embarking on his own Italian binge of an appropriately in-the-family white wine.

The only question left to ask is – what happened to the lumberjacks for the first three Leisure games this year?