War in Singapore 2: Damn Poor (then downpour) in Johor

I was away for this part of the story but I understand that a few weeks ago, at the annual end-of-season dinner, it emerged that a not insignificant detail of the planning for the War in Singapore had been overlooked. While flights and accommodation had been booked and paid for, it dawned on the Dogs that night that something fairly important was missing...actual cricket matches!

After some hasty phone calls the upshot was, on Sunday morning at 8.30am, we were in mini-busses bound for the Malaysian border. Specifically the famous Johor Cricket Academy.

Here - we were cheerfully informed by yesterday's opponents, The Misfits - we would play a better team in yet hotter conditions, than we had the day before. We knew the "Jolly Wallabies" were better because those same people that thrashed us yesterday had themselves been thrashed by these Wallabies only a few weeks previous. Hotter because the heat was not "moderated" - such as it was - by the sea, as it was in Singers . Given how badly the previous day had gone from a result perspective, these stark realities did not bode well. Even worse was the fact that at least half the team had not got to bed before 4am, significantly worse for wear. So a fifth straight tour defeat looked more or less a forgone conclusion.

Once we negotiated the various immigration checks on the bridge-cum-border onto the Malay peninsular (made longer by my own particularly complex dual-passport-and-lost-immigration-card situation) we arrived in Johor just after 10am and stepped out into a new kind of blistering heat experience. Heat that made yesterday's climes seem positively clement and refreshing. The heat weighed down on us like a gargantuan burden. Each step was an effort, running was a mammoth task. We found we began to asses the need to do either with great scrutiny.

And the bowling quickly revealed itself to be a kind of pace we had never faced before. Fast, invisible and dangerous. The pitch was concrete-hard and bereft of a single blade of grass. I opened the batting with a still intoxicated team mate (who shall remain nameless). Said team mate in fact was still so drunk he volunteered to face the first ball. I happily let him.

He was clean bowled third ball, without connecting.

I hung on for a few overs, and even fluked some runs. But felt all along like a small rodent being toyed with by a sadistic cat. I was warned several times for running on the pitch. I told the umpire I'd never been warned about that before. We'd never played on a pitch anyone cared about that much. It wasn't long before I followed my opening partner having been clean bowled by a typically invisible ball.

After the first four wickets fell to the opening pace men, they brought the spin bowler on and our fifth wicket fell soon after, the stalwart Bryan Fenech. We were 24/5, most of which were extras. Our problem now was that as the extras and fluke fours we were accruing from errant fast balls dried up, so did our run rate. Another problem was that so much sweat poured from your forehead that you could barely see the ball. Sharing the completely necessary helmets meant each new batsmen was drenched in someone else's sweat from the internal padding. When Giles Bourne's wicket fell we were 27/7.

With some "Dogged" perseverance, however, from Sean Garvey, Brett Lunn - and once more our brand new dog, Anthony Sloan - we crawled our way agonisingly past out worst ever score - the 63 in Cairns - to escape the shame of a new low. Ultimately though we were all out for 68. The shame was heavy, but the relief that the end was near was greater.

In the break, we realised there was one area we were consistently thrashing our opposition: eating. We hadn't realised the sandwiches laid out were to be shared with our hosts. So we ate them. An awkward atmosphere descended when the Jolly Wallabies finally came out to eat. We shuffled away from the scene of the crime and tried not to look as our opponents realised we had scoffed far more than our fair share. This was a repeat performance of two different meal times the previous days with the Misfits. Not best guest practice admittedly, but a win is a win is a win, as they say.

So we took the field, in what were increasingly stifling conditions. We sensed that our gracious hosts had mercifully reversed their batting order because the torrent of boundaries we were expecting did not immediately materialise. Also, our opening bowlers - Sean Garvey and Bryan Fenech were admirably tight and economical. So while the batting performance was professional, methodical and ever-incremental - it was not yet humiliating.

As we reached the fourth over, with one wicket already in the bag, two remarkable things happened that we are unlikely to see again. First Sean Garvey secured a rare LBW wicket. Rare because we don't generally play the rule - seen as too controversial, divisive and complex.

But as that batsman vacated the crease an even weirder thing happened. The quite beautiful pitch on which we played was almost literally in the shadow of a large mosque. As we awaited the next batsmen, suddenly the call to prayer began to echo across the ground - and we were instructed by the umpire to down tools for the duration of it. Call to prayer stopped play. The juxtaposition of an Aussie-English cricket team standing patiently while the call to prayer rang out was quite possibly the most surreal episode of Mad Dogs history. Soon it drew to an end and we resumed, like nothing had happened. A powerful moment - like our Cobra jeopardy of yesterday - unlikely to be repeated.

Whatever we did now, the only question that remained about the game was "how soon". As wickets fell, we only exchanged one batsman for a better one. The run rate gently increased as it cantered towards the final total with the inevitability of a setting sun.

An angry cloud formation had been gradually approaching us and we hoped it would bring the game to a premature end to save us from official humiliation. It didn't and our meagre total was nonchalantly surpassed with little fanfare. but we had barely returned to the pavilion when the first clap of a deafening thunder broke. Blinding flashes of lightening struck all around us and the wind picked up, blowing down everything that wasn't firmly affixed to the ground. Torrential rain instantly drenched the pitch we had only moments before withdrawn from. Clearly the storm was right above us because the lightening and thunder claps were right on top of each other. Trees collapsed around the ground and driving rain filled the drains and flooded the pavilion floor. Despite living in Sydney, a city regularly struck by its own powerful storms, none of the dogs had ever seen the like. Genuinely awesome.

But the apocalyptic storm did set up a fitting momento for the end of the tour. To match last year's "Dancing Brendan" in Cairns as the tour .gif, Sean Garvey's seal-dive across the flooded pitch was a totally suitable post script for a smashing weekend's cricketing adventure that has left us all older, wiser and boasting broader horizons.

Thanks to all for organising, and here's to Japan '17!

(More pictures here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/624u6bk42bisd85/AABvJ18TlLtmdjmQQlxgVlUca?dl=0)