Pre-Season warm up - 1st June 2006 - Regents Park.

The first outing of the 2006 season was a somewhat poorly attended pre-season warm up game consisting of some of the usual Carib Beer XI ringers and a few of the caribs. For those of us that had attended the winter nets at the @Carib Beer XI winter Cricketing Academy at the Oval it wasn't as painful as it could have been, but the lack of practice was noticable in most of us.

As we didn't have sufficient for a two team game, the format of the match was three overs batting and bowling each, with five runs docked each time you were out while batting.

Martin Haigh, our leader and team manager, did his usual sterling job of shepharding the troops around the field and deciding on the bowling and batting order. Martin, however, found it rather too tempting to use his position to protect his end of season averages by manipulating the bowling order to his own ends. Martin's bowling figures, not too bad as they stand overall, hide a hideous first over that disappeared for 13 runs. At this point, the normally competative Martin decided to withdraw himself from the attack, before completing his alloted overs, obviously fearing further statistical deterioration in the face of some particularly agressive batting. With his confidence severly dented, he only felt confident in returning to complete his overs when a batsman of much lesser ability was at the crease. This needs to be borne in mind when studying Martin's end of season statistics in the event that this kind of behaviour is repeated.