Madein’s Diary…I mean the Leisure Match report

8^th May 2011

I awoke early from the bright hot sunshine striking my picturesque physique at about 6am. Alarm hadn’t gone off, so I went back to sleep for the remaining 30 minutes. The normal alarm went off, so I tried to ignore it. Unfortunately the kids were more keen to go to cricket than I was an immediately rushed me in bed to drag me out for the first Leisure game of the season. No sleep, so time to exact revenge for my lack of sleep on the poor unfortunate souls that play for The Team That May Not Be Named.

Arriving to the prostitute greeting party that is outside the Camel awaiting all the heroic Bashers, I was promptly ungreeted as I was arriving with wife and kids. It seems that this year, our friends from outside the Camel are particularly nasty looking, basically right up Circus’ alley. Dags and Stiffy were already there, after our illustrious leader Latte (The Basher formerly known as Parrot) told them to arrive at 7am, instead of 7.30am. Way to treat the newbies – Latte. And then true to his new nickname, Latte arrived late, with coffee in hand. (He made a poor excuse that it was an Americano, but nobody could care less). We then boarded the bus with our evil nemesis, The Team That May Not Be Named, pricks. It was an uneventful bus ride, with the usual tunnel beers and giving Stiffy shit about his new nickname.

Arriving at the ground, we had to bribe a certain staff member to allow us to bring our eski-water into the new Basher’s corner, annoying. 100RMB of mine (200 from others) was well spent to keep Bashers hydrated. We then waited for the stragglers to arrive by subway/taxi/whatever. Once Sharapova arrived, we proceed with warm-ups. We were all highly apprehensive to the idea, since it is very un-Basherlike. But stretching with Sharapova was too attractive an offer to pass up, so we stretched. We then participated in catching practice, and I caught some!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! One handed, diving etc etc. I am an awesome fielder, watch out. Then I let one fly through my hands, so I was ok, I hadn’t caught whatever disease Filthy (Reigning Shanghai Fielder of the Year) has. Oh, and we were still waiting for Puberty.

It was then time for the toss. Despite Latte’s obvious mastery of tossing, he lost the toss against The Team That May Not Be Named. Shows what a bunch of tossers they are. For some bizarre reason, they chose to FIELD, with only 9 players. We donated Long Dong to them, then Dags. Conan tried to volunteer, but we told him to (*#$ off, as we can’t give them the future Shanghai Fielder of the Year). While the others were batting, I was paying no attention, as they were boring as hell, and it was more interesting teaching my son how to say the word “caterpillar” as there was a disgusting looking one crawling around our kit bags (Not to be confused with Kit Bag).

The only performance of note, was Sharapova, Stiffy, Pot Hole and Nanjing Shears were batting for a significant amount of time, obviously milking wides, since they weren’t smashing the ball around. Everybody else must’ve sucked. The best performance was probably Stiffy sledging Latte, after Latte played a pathetic shot to get out. I wasn’t paying attention, so didn’t hear it. I finally got my turn to bat, in what turned out to be the last ball of the innings (Which seems to be defining my Bashers career), and then telling me to hit it for 6 to get 200. Idiots, what do you think I will try to do for the last ball, block? It was then, that I noticed that my partner at the other end was Shears, with whom we had planned our opening batting partnership since he was still a tosser on The Team That May Not Be Named. So I tried to whack a ball over the 200m square leg boundary unsuccessfully, thought it would be 4, but obviously I hit like a pussy. As Shears and I were running through, emotion got the better of us and we engaged in a manly embrace, before realizing the ball didn’t make it for four and it was time to run. Since it was the last ball, there was no reason to conserve our wickets and a suicidal 2^nd was on the cards. It turned out to be suicidal, because Pusher ran me out since he failed to notice the opposing keeper was too busy humping the stumps, so the bails would already be dislodge before the direct hit came in. We gave him a video camera, but didn’t record the controversy. Instead, wasting it on some kid with a perfectly legal action.

When it was our turn to bowl, Latte set us on a random scatter field. It was highly effective, as the opposing batsmen couldn’t actually bat. I decided to stand at fine leg, but decided to move to backstop after a while, cause Latte’s keeping was shit. He conveniently forgot about his strike bowler as I was busying falling asleep at backstop. Drinks break came and went, with no wickets on the board. Latte obviously seeing the errors in his ways, put me on. 1^st ball, Stiffy drops a sitter with his stiff hands. Next ball, I nail the guy Lbw, and the Korean promptly gives him out. It was the loopy going to bounce twice before the stumps delivery that seems to confuse everyone. He got hit on the downward projectile after the first bounce on the backleg in front of middle after it pitched on middle. Obviously the batsman complained, but he can join the long list of other hopeless batsman that can’t hit me (2 bashers in the Business come to mind).

• Sunday 8 May 2011 SRFC Near
  Bashers Leisure 196/8 (6.56)
  DPR Hot Dogs 174/3 (3.34)

2011 Division Three