SELSEY BILL (HOME) - Thursday, July 24, 2003
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I mean, it's not like it was the Loafers' night to start with: Keith Budd and Alec Wallsgrove were indulging in sinful excesses at the WOMAD festival, leaving Steve King to attempt to cobble together an eleven. Instead of an eleven, he managed a nine. And someone had half-inched the scoreboard, leaving behind - even more bizarrely - its battered, rusty numerals. Why, God only knows. It's not like 101 Uses for a Naked Scoreboard has been high on the best seller lists. I mean, picture the potential author of a would-be oeuvre on the multifarious alternative uses for scoreboard sans digits: he'd sit down after breakfast and go, "Right then. Number One�" Come teatime, and your man is still there with a blank sheet of paper. Okay, we'll leave why aside for the minute. What about how? Because there's no getting away from it, that scoreboard is bleeding heavy. You don't insouciantly waltz away with it in one hand, it's a big bastard scoreboard. But Sherlock Holmes being away on other duties, the Mystery of the Missing Scoreboard will have to wait until another week. Well, at least we won the toss and elected to bat, eh? Ah. The New Park Road wicket, habitually as uneven as a teenager's hormone levels, had clearly thought to itself: let's do something really special tonight. Let's pull out all the stops, let's have them bouncing at all angles, let's make it really scary out there for those batsmen. Under an overcast sky, Neil Holmes and Trevor Almack marched out to face whatever Selsey had to throw at them. The first ball to Holmes - from James - pitched just short of a length and scuttled through roughly a centimetre off the deck. The second landed in the same area and whistled through at shoulder height. Holmes smouldered quietly beneath his helmet. After Almack had played out a maiden at the other end, Holmes finally got the AWOL scoreboard ticking over with a square cut for four off James. The pair had put on 20 when, in the seventh over, James (or rather the pitch) produced one that reared off a length which Holmes nicked to the 'keeper. He was replaced by Harry Rawlings, who clumped the ball to the long on boundary before being bowled by one that kept low. Nick Pennicott came and went quickly, and after Almack and Gary McDougall had hung around for a few overs both fell in quick succession, leaving the Loafers struggling at 48 for five: with just two men to come and the wicket having a whale of a time, 60 seemed a remote possibility. At which point Windsor Holden ambled to the wicket and, after nicking a single off his first ball, elegantly pulled Keith Simmonds past square leg for four. (Your correspondent being Windsor Holden, and this being his first boundary since he clunked a leg spinner down to cow corner while playing for Panteg Thirds in the early 1990s, any of his boundaries are going to be described as "elegant". Or "sumptuous". In the same way that some might feel that the one that disappeared down to the third man boundary a few balls later was in fact a "lucky nick", he would prefer to describe as "delicately placed".) After his initial partner Anthony Eastwood had departed to a Pete White delivery that rolled almost apologetically onto the stumps, he added an additional 20 with Steve King before being bowled for a run-a-ball 18 that was filled with verve, brio and panache/ was outrageously lucky (delete as appropriate). Steve King ended with 14 not out, and the Loafers had somehow dragged the score up to the heights of 82 for seven when their allotted 20 overs ran out. It had seemed that, given the demons lurking beneath the wicket, that the Loafers might be in with a shout: Holmes lined up three slips alongside 'keeper Rawlings, but this field placing was quickly dispensed with as Selsey opener Harvey lashed successive balls to the long-off boundary. Steve King came in for even more punishment, and when change bowlers Nick "wobbler" Pennicott and Gary McDougal came into the attack, Harvey and opening partner Field merely accelerated still further. Where were the demons? Maybe they'd be dispensed with by Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (And Willow. Don't forget Willow. Phwoar! That Alyson Hannigan, eh, guv? But anyway.) With four to win, Field was clean bowled by Pennicott for 28, and McDougal then derived the satisfaction of deriving Harvey of a fifty when he sent him packing in the next over for 47. Only for his replacement to take guard and casually dispatch the next ball for six. Another crushing defeat for the Loafers. Dear Pitch Demons, Could you please play the game and create havoc throughout all forty overs, rather than buggering off on holiday at half-time? Or, better still, could you just up sticks and move somewhere else (like Selsey - it's by the seaside - you'll like it) where we only have to play once a season?
Yours more in hope than expectation,
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Skulking Loafers Fixture List 2003
