"Report" by Daniel Mortlock:
When, back in March, an e-mail came in from the secretary of the intriguingly-named Island Taverners CC, Dave Higgins, enquiring about a possible friendly game during their August bank holiday tour of Cambridgeshire, it seemed a no-brainer to grab the chance of an afternoon game to mark the end of the cricket season. And, in terms of the inter-club aspects, it was a good call: the organisation went smoothly; we both wanted the same sort of game; the two teams were "evenly matched with the same age ranges and mobility", according to Dave; and, to put it simply, it sounded like all 19 players had a great time.
But, as you're possibly starting to suspect, there was a problem; and, now that you've been alerted to that fact, you might well be coming around to the idea that it's got something to do with the number 19. If so, you'd be spot on: despite a total of 108 (yes, one hundred and fucking eight) e-mails on the subject of "Remnants vs. Island Taverners", we still only managed to field a team of nine players. (They were also one short, as one of their guys was cricketed-out by this, the final day of their tour.) If everyone who'd said they could play at some point had turned up then we could have played an internal match; but, instead, we had a bare eleven plus twelfth man on the Sunday evening, which rapidly shrank on the morning of the match. The reasons for all this vacillation were individually understandable (especially the painful hemorrhoids that one player invoked), but the overall effect was awesomely frustrating.
All of which, sadly, has precious little to do with an excellent day's cricket - but saying something about that will require the input of someone who was actually there . . .