The Jolly Boys Cricket Club

But what's this ? The jollys are (for once) on time and the gates are locked. Could it be that St. Josephs aren't going to show ? Tension mounts as the entire Jollys side start drooling at the prospect of not only a win by default but a full day in the pub !

The umpire regales us with tales of cricketing lore whilst we try to steer the conversation around to what sort of sum, left casually lying around in an umpires pockets, could a team reasonably expect to make a difference to the outcome of the game ?

Ah... t'was not to be and St. Jospehs were merely letting us stew. So after winning the toss we're in to bat. But a glorious may day sees our wickets start to fall. A returning Tan explains to Nige "Speedy Gonzales" that there are possibilities of excuses relating to tree cover and refelections off the nearby homes.

Egad ! Call that a scoreboard ? It doesn't even take a battery - nor does it come with a full selection of optional add on accessories (neither does ours, yet - ed.) Admittedly you can see the state of play but it's not very 21st century is it ?

But at last ! An actual picture of the Jollys in the field. And to prove this is a real game picture you can see Baz running in from stage left to field the ball. And a run saved is as good as a run scored in this game.

Ah Captain Newman gives some encouragement to Aaron whose trousers are clearly still sporting saturdays mud (you can tell from the colour that it's genuine Stanley Park mud, there's nowhere else in the cricketing world that has mud like that -ed.)

And it's disaster for St. Josephs as a rushed second run sees their number 3 batsman pull a hamstring. After a brief attempt to run it off he sadly has to retire injured. But with their number 4 trying his best to smash the windows of the houses opposite their score is steadily piling along and our total is looking smaller by the minute.

Botheration there go the winning runs and the Jollys return to the pavillion wondering both what could have been and how much of the beer will "Carpet" Col have left for the rest of us ?.

But after failing to bat out our overs there was only ever one outcome to this game and at least we know what we need to do... Make an appointment with an opticians then go and have some batting practise. Bah !