Match Report: Newington Rules

I knew we were in trouble the night before at a party when the captain told me that I was one of only two specialist bowlers and as such, great things were expected of me. This gave me tremendous cause for concern. Not least because I am only considered a "specialist bowler" because I can't bat! It was likely to be, I was told, the weakest maddogs side ever fielded. Yikes.

Limited selection options were only one of our problems as it turned out. Not only had the opposition captain attended all of our Nets practice sessions and thereby appraised our strengths and weaknesses awfully well; but they had - since our last meeting - recruited several very strong players including one first-grader! On the morning of the match, four of us struggled to the ground the victims of nasty but self-inlicted tequila hangovers from the 40th birthday the night before. My own hangover hindered my running between the wickets, as it turned out, causing me to be run out for only 3 runs after facing only 5 balls.

Our selection options turned quickly into an injury epidemic leaving us quite weak in the field after Anthony Cheshire pulled up quite early in the piece as his perennial calf injury returned leaving him quite one-legged. Moreover our Treasurer Ed Suttle appeared still lame after a violent altercation with one of his prize bulls more than a year ago. At one point this left me nominated to cover half the pitch should anything slip through our perforated slip defence. Eventually we were forced to draft in children to do the running for us. Never had the Maddogs felt quite so old.

This match saw experimentation with new rules - henceforth to be known as the Newington Rules - where a 35 over game is reconfigured to be two back to back 20/20 matches, or like a mini test match. Sadly our first innings saw a fairly mediocre total of 102 after strong batting from Richard Steyen and most surisingly an unprecendented 15 from our drink-addled captain and club president, Giles Bourne.

It quickly became apparent that our 102 was not much of a target for the Newington lot who began their chase down with much gusto, ultimately reaching 134 in the alloted 20 overs before we broke for a sausage sizzle. Great expectations of my bowling the night before were sorely disapointed in the first innings, with the only positive of my first 12 balls being that they exercised all of our fielders as their batsmen peppered all corners of the ground with them. Adding to that the catch I dropped and I've learnt a painful lesson about the preparation virtues of tequila, or lack there of.

So back into bat we went, only this time reversing the order as these new fangled rules dictated. My second innings was even worse than the first - caught on only two runs. (Pathetically, those two runs were only achieved by slightly touching a wayward ball as it sailed over my head.) My running between wickets was confused not only by an alcohol impaired brain, but also because Ed Suttle came on with a runner - the highly enthusiastic Welshman Mark Harvey. So I kept looking for Ed to run only to suddenly realise Mark had already set off and was nearly at my end!

When my wicket quickly fell, on came our other walking wounded, Anthony Cheshire, requesting his own runner. This of course led to untold comedy as with two batsmen, two runners and the Maddog umpires also on the field, half the team was out on the field, if not actually in as such. I declined the role of runner for Anthony - the confusion was too much for me.

Suffice it to say though, our run chase was greatly impaired by our various inadequcies and we managed to add only another 99. Luckily Newington couldn't seem to catch for toffee or it could have been much worse. So we left them an easy 60-odd run chase which they were able to achieve with very little resistance and five overs to spare. A well deserved victory that from the very outset never really seemed in doubt.

You can enjoy pictures of the day here, with credits to Giles for his photographic sense of occasion.

It's traditional to list out the honors but on this day, perhaps the darkest in Maddgs hostory, it is a shrted list than usual. There were terrific catches by Mssrs Garvey and Harvey and very strong batting performances by Tim Pallett and Sean Garvey, not to mention a superb all round effort by Richard Steyen. I did manage a double-wicket over myself - putting me briefly and excitingly on a hat trick at one point - thereby mitigating my other poor contributions I like to think.

Probably the most important efforts of the day were those by our newly-blooded "MadPups" Charlie and Jamie who put in stirling fielding accomplishments for which they were rewarded by an over each bowlng - which also showed great promise for the future.

But on balance the experiemnet with the new Newington Rules seemed a great success and we hope to employ them again at our next match - Ashes I. Go the Dogs!