Report by Daniel Mortlock:
"It was a good toss to lose" is one of cricket's stranger cliches, but it probably held true today. The Woozlers captain, Ryan Bridger, informed us that some of their players were running a little late, implying they might need to bat first . . . but also that one of their guys would have to leave early, so they wouldn't mind fielding. It was hence all but inevitable that Ryan would call incorrectly, leaving the decision to us. There were arguments both ways, but in the end Ben Stone's desire to steam in with a new ball won the day, and so that's exactly how the game started . . .
. . . which previously has seen the ball swing past the outside edge, but today led to a boundary. The problem: the Woozlers cheated by sending out a left-handed opener. The result: even though it broadly felt like we were on top of the batsmen initially, we leaked a boundary every over, a trend which only halted when said southpaw was dismissed, by which time the Woozlers' total was 43. The successful bowler was Andy Owen (2/12) who was definitely the star turn with the ball today, although an honourable mention must also go to Alec Armstrong (2/19), who once again deceived with flight and guile. Add in Teddy Fletcher's tidy spell of 1/14, and it might seem that we were on top, which was certainly how it felt, even if the Woozlers' eventual total of 134/7 was at worst competitive.
Sadly, it rapidly became daunting as our top order failed to, er, . . . well, just failed, really. At one end wickets fell regularly, while at the other Kanwar Singh was kept surprisingly quiet, at one stage scoring just 4 runs in a 21-ball sequence. By the time we'd eked our way to 39/4 off 12 (six-ball) overs we were done.
That left us to instead argue whether it was proper to bother one of the opposition players to determine whether he really was "off the telly". Turns out he was: Richard Westcott might bowl decent medium pace in mid-week cricket, but most people know him as the BBC's erstwhile transport correspondent. Hopefully Ev Fox will be back in the UK for the return match against the Woozlers in July and so we can have an Al Jazeera vs. BBC celebrity all-star game that's live-tweeted all around the world . . .
