Accrington 3rds 2006

Saturday 10th June 2006
Accrington 308, East Lancs 241

I won the toss for the second time in a row and for three reasons I elected to bat first. Firstly the burning sun and excess heat, secondly the brilliant shiny deck and thirdly and most importantly the safety of my players in this stifling heat with specific reference to Spenny's predisposition to sweat like an overfed and oversized Vietnamese pot bellied pig, and a barrel shaped one at that!

As a team we managed to reach the dizzy heights of 308 all out. A third 11 record, smashing the 287 set 5 years ago. In the process I managed to score my maiden hundred and I have the urge to boast…actually lets give it a try…the century was spectacular and consisted of stroke play reminiscent of classical sub continental aggressors and batting prodigies of the past, I ran between the wickets like a meteor and bowlers were roasted like delicacies with cuts drives and heaves over mid wicket……A real analysis of the situation would actually reveal a toothless bowling attack that only consisted of 2 players that can be called bowlers. The rest of the East Lancs bowlers threw down some real pies, samosas, beach balls, and even a car tire! Rarely did they look threatening and I managed to capitalize (dropped once on 60). I faced 58 balls for my 50 and a total of 87 balls for my eventual score of 111. Rick ‘the 5 knuckle flick’ Williams managed another fluent innings, this time getting 53 before I ran him out (partnership of 109 with myself). Saggy ‘The mentally unstable time bomb’ Hussain got us off to a good start with a typically belligerent 35.

The opposition captain, an ex first teamer opened the batting and within no time flayed our attack to all parts of the ground as we chucked down some genuine cow ****. Inside 18 overs they had reached 150-1. It was embarrassing as we just fueled his strength shots with consistent wild short bowling. If you gave us a rock we would still somehow contrive to pitch it short n get chest high bounce! The guy on a 109 gave us once clear cut chance at gully only for Spenny to fumble and grass it.

I was beginning to think the impossible…. that they may win it. I gave the dead eye to Spenny at gully…surprise surprise he was spurting out more sweat than ever before due to this missed opportunity and at this stage I was tempted to chuck him some armbands 2 ensure that he didn’t drown in his own salty liquid, he was almost submerged in it, even the umpires may have thought of calling the game off due to a waterlogged pitch! The guy was leaking like a fountain. Lucky for him, Jenny found the perfect inswinger to bowl the East Lancs captain out for a fine 111. I breathed sigh of relief and you could see the joy on Spenny too, through his celebratory leaps which would have been registered by seismologists throughout Europe.

Zafar ‘Jenny’ Aslam perhaps the only 24 year old guy in the world to drive £60,000 super charged sports cars but at the same time wear reject clothes that were dropped off at Oxfam by a 90 year old pensioner with a leaky colostomy bag. Despite this fact the guy bowled his heart out and found some perfect inswing to get career best figures of 7-21 off 9.1 overs and be solely responsible for bringing East Lancs innings to a grinding halt at 241 all out (bearing in mind 10 of my players got a chuck). A good game of cricket was played with 550 runs scored, 20 wickets fallen, 2 hundreds scored, career best bowling figures and most importantly of all, 5 points for Accrington.