Lumberjack Leisure vs Dulwich June 11th 2017

What is a Captain’s role?

Some might say it is to set the field diligently, be proactive, change the bowlers and try to out think the batsmen, but as the captain of Leisure there is more to it than that. All the afore mentioned tasks can be outsourced/delegated to someone else on the field; where the Leisure captain shows his worth is in logistics…making sure there is beer, pies, getting the team to the field on time, winning the toss (or at least predicting the toss), attending fines and making sure the lumberjack is written.

This season, despite Leisure having not had pies for longer than I can remember, which is not my fault, I consider that the logistics have been carried out to an acceptable standard; and in the case of a team member (Pope) shirking their responsibility in writing a Lumberjack which they agreed to do, so it now comes for me to ensure the role of the captain is carried out fully and write the Lumberjack myself, while it is still possible to remember some of the things that happened that day. Here we go…………

As we arrived bleary eyed at The Camel on a Sunday morning at 7am. Oh hang on, it was actually Leisure’s only afternoon match of the season starting at 130pm and we caught the bus along with Business at 11am.

The night before had been Bambi & Thumper’s engagement party and Bambi had arrived still very much drunk, having woken up on the floor of his apartment convinced he was already in trouble with his fiancé for some unknown misdemeanour, only to be relieved to find out he had acted just about within the limits of acceptable behaviour for a newly engaged man. After said party, Parrot and Pope had gone to the Camel to watch England vs Scotland play football and had ended up drinking in the square outside Camel after having been ejected when the Camel closed (the camel closes?) with Tantric and Windy.

Fruitbox had come straight from a night out, having ‘lost his keys’ in Celia the night before. For those uninitiated with Shanghai’s nightclub scene, Celia is a night club, not a woman. With his girlfriend away, there was no way for Fruity to gain entry to his house and so he had decided to make a night of it by going back to Celia to ‘look for his keys’ and come straight to the Camel at 11am. With Fruitbox originally due to play for Business and Cassius looking increasingly concerned by Fruitbox’s lack of sleep, the D1 captain hastily entered into negotiations with Tampon and a swap was agreed for Fruitbox to join Leisure and Sharapova to move up to Business.

With Business on the bus, the banter was predictably as dry as a pharoah’s thong with only Leisure, now including Fruitbox, taking beers on the way to the ground. The bus arrived at SCSC in time for business to start their match which meant that Leisure had time to kill before the start of their match.  Some people went for a net while Parrot, Stroker and Tampon went to practice throwing, with some beers. After having an argument with a Chinese football team about moving the goalposts, Stroker set a short boundary.

Tampon won the toss and decided that Leisure would have a bowl, so we could chill out later, which was greeted with severe consternation from the rest of the team. No matter what you decide to do, the team will never be happy! Actually, it was a bit of a foolish decision to bat first as Mouse was still on the way to the ground in a taxi, accompanied by cheerleaders Jeremy, Miriam, Spanner and George.

Paps opened the bowling with Rash, just as Mouse shuffled onto the field. Paps bowling off his now signature 0-2 pace run up keeping it tight but without result, Rash with his run up like a young Labrador not as accurate. It wasn’t long before Stroker came on and, bowling accurately, took the first wicket of the day, clean bowling Dulwich’s opening batsman.

Skiddy was the next to take a wicket, getting one of Dulwich’s big fish out LBW from what was a subjective decision from the ump.   Meanwhile Mouse’s left breast took the brunt of a catchable chance from Dulwich’s opening bat who was moving towards 50. Dulwich continued to make runs without much distraction as Fruitbox (wearing shoes he stole from Tampon), Bambi and Mouse all had a bowl without taking a wicket.

As the Dulwich innings came towards its conclusion, the Bashers started to make things happen. Omega came on for a bowl and got a wicket first ball, Fruitbox taking a catch in the deep. Paps came on for the last over of the innings, and took two wickets in a row bringing a small, Indian child to the crease. I am a firm believer that children should be treated like grown ups whenever possible, including when facing a hat trick ball and so the field was brought up close and the young lad was made to feel the pressure. He duly got run out and we had achieved a notable team hat trick. Who’s laughing now!?

With a target off 208 to win it seemed Dulwich were the team laughing, the total seemed a bit of an ask but we gave it a go anyway. Parrot came flying out of the blocks, edging 5 boundaries to get him to within reach of a second 50 for the season but was bowled for 47 with a strike rate of 150. However at the other end, the wickets were falling rapidly with Paps run out for 3, Omega caught for 1, Bambi bowled for 4 and Pope caught for 1. Skiddy & Norm came on to steady the ship a little getting 11 & 17 respectively followed by Stroker with 14 before the batting highlight of the day which was Fruitbox’s batting attire. Legend. 3 ball duck.

Rash & Tampon came out and played some shots, in Tampon’s case the same shot several times and scored 14 & 15 respectively before Tampon got out caught last ball of the innings to leave us with a score of 156 all out.

With the time getting on, we all jumped on the bus and Fruitbox started a riotous double team fines session which was continued in the camel where Pope notably refused to join the rest of the Bashers in the back room and ate his pizza on his own in the front.

Fruitbox Summer 2017 collection

“Anyone wanna give me some throw downs?”