Pants against Hants

It was agreed the report for this game would be a revolving notebook version for anyone willing and for Barmy Kev to type this up with his observations. It worked out that Beefy and Kimmy noted the middle part of this depressing cricket day, while Kev mainly comments on Merchant Taylor's as a venue. Beware this is not a pretty read.

Mrs Barmy turned up for her token day at cricket. We were buoyant having witnessed the previous day QPR somehow making Premier League and were on a spiritual high from factors outside of sport. The journey to Moor Park was fine and we followed signs from the station to the ground with ease, not passing one residential part. Given our radars aren’t normally good, I was surprised to hear of two accounts of our fans lost on the doorstep. Rumour has it the locals removed signs or from what I saw one turned the other way round. Perhaps they were trying doing us a favour or was this sabotage?

The ground was picturesque and there was enough space and spare chairs to accommodate at least double the crowd.  I found the drinking and eating options very limited and queue for bar more than desirable, but not a problem for me as I was not absorbed by the cricket. I used to criticise others who had this kind of thought process. Some more MT observations before we talk about our dire 20/20 cricket. There is no apparent shelter available, whether it’s boiling hot or peeing down with rain. To make a comparison with Uxbridge their pavilion was in your face for refuge and I’m yet to discover whether this is available at MT, unless the nearby residents, bless them, want to help us out. There are no shops nearby too.

 Moving on to Cricket, do we have to?   We arrived right at start and saw Hi Fi bowl two dot balls followed by a succession of boundaries off of him, followed by more carnage. Vince was convincing when he reached 50 in 8^th over. Well at least I’ve got scope for a headline. With score at 100-0 after10 overs I think it was reasonable for me to say to Mrs this score could end up close to 250 we have no chance and lets continue to extol the day before as consolation.

Good time for Beefy to take over, with some edits to his notes. The impressive Ravi gets two wickets ends up with 4-0-23-2 at his old school. Some bloke called Owais Shah hits boundaries. Score 198-2 not as bad as it seemed at some stage.

 Over to Kimmy who could not write anything for first 3 overs as she was eating a muffin.  Once muffin was consumed our score was 22-0 and at this stage Hants were 29-0. Next over Stirlo hits a 6, dare we say game on.    Don’t hold your breath were soon 44-3. There were optimistic words in Kimmy’s writing that we could still do it, but soon Mala out caught in deep, shortly after Christian run out.   Before Kimmy leaves, here is a quiz Christian is our new no. 54, who did he take that number from? (a clue is he is our current no.8). Kimmy leaves with Spillasge (cheerio X 3).  We are on 105-5 after 14 overs gone, game over.

 Notebook handed over to Barmy Kev.   Shah caught Denly in deep, couldn’t he pretended he was playing for Middlesex and drop it someone said. Game well and truly over.   The scoreboard wasn’t keeping up so difficult to work out how much out of it we were.   Beefy found watching the grass grow more entertaining and was describing the different colours of a leaf to keep us entertained as the inevitable defeat by 47 runs occurred. 

This is our 4^th successive humiliating 20/20 defeat. Roll on “ proper “ cricket for the next four days. Weather and sign posting permitting.