Fresh from a ten-wicket loss against The Woozlers, we came into this match pretty safe in the knowledge that the worst of the week was behind us, even if today's opposition, The Globe, was the only other club ever to have inflicted such an extreme defeat on us. And the horrific possibility of a repeat performance almost immediately became an impossibility when, as Dave Green reports, we lost the toss and were asked to field first.
Any sense of optimisim was, however, quickly dispelled when the first ball was smacked for four (almost a six). After 3 (eight-ball) overs the score was 48; after 7 it was 113. They were scoring at more than two runs per ball, and not off our part-timers, either. Les Collings, having been hit for 41 off his 2 overs, was sufficiently distraught to send in his own e-mail eulogy (``I've never been clattered so much since the last time I bowled a load of shite.'') and poor Russell Woolf, captaining the club for the first time, has figures of 1/46 off his 2 overs to remember his leadership debut. At least the worst was over for him: after the two free-hitting openers retired the scoring rate slowed to just the one run per ball, with Nick Clarke (1/11) and Alex Brown (1/27) even taking a few wickets.
As we set about accumulating the 185 runs needed for victory, we soon found out that The Globe's strengths didn't stop with the opening batsmen, but continued into bowling and fielding too. Ev Fox played a nice innings of 24, and Tony Malik (14) and John Richer (12 in what will hopefully not be his only appearance this season) at least made it into double figures, but we never really got going, and eventually limped our way to a rather sad 81/4, the small matter of 103 runs short (our largest ever runs defeat).
In the end the only question left was whether this hundred-run stuffing (as Les demanded it be called) was better or worse than the ten-wicket thrashing we received last night. And the only sensible answer is: "Who cares?"