Carib Beer vs UKGI, Greenwich Park,

Tuesday 4th June 2019

For the second year on the bounce, The Carib Beer Xi found themselves scheduled to face the might of her majesty's Brexit supporting Government in our second game of the season. It would be interesting to see if UKGI's Wragg would dominate the Carib batsmen in the same manner as last year where he managed to get on a hat-trick twice in the same over and ended with figures of 6 for 11 from 4 overs with two catches from his own bowling for good measure. Without wanting to spoil the surprise, I will report now, Wragg didn't perform to the same Man of the Match levels.

Further similarities to last year would be evident, the weather was again poor, this time to the extent that the Carib's Indian contingent were all separately heard saying that the game should be suspended, Thankfully all were ultimately convinced that turning up would be best and they duly obliged. However, the same cajoling appeared to be lacking in other offices across the city. The Carib's lost two players to late drop outs, and the UKGI suffered a total of 4 players becoming strangely unavailable at short notice. These last minute "work" requirements led to this year's fixture being 9 vs 7 with an ultimately terrible agreement, from a Carib perspective, to allow some players to bat twice - more on that to follow.

After reviewing several weather related apps that promised no more rain in Greenwich from 6pm and intense scrutiny and studying of the contractual agreements with Greenwich district council with regard to paying for pitch maintenance in the event it resembled the Somme circa 1916 post any play, it was agreed we were on and the toss was carried out. Unsurprisingly our tosser losing Captain Haigh lost the toss, but rather surprisingly, considering their ranks only numbered 3, The UKGI elected to field. Haigh asked Caribs Rayner and Ringer Banerjee to pad up, which they did with great enthusiasm. One minute later common sense reared its head and UKGI elected to bat. Off came the Carib pads and both teams took to the field.

The Caribs opened the bowling with a potent mix of age and speed with Swanand and Worthy sharing the first 4 overs and limiting the UKGI score to 19 runs from the opening exchanges. The first changes saw another mix of age and speed with the introduction of Carib Newbie Nitin and 50 year old Carib Captain Haigh for a further attack on the UKGI batsmen. These changes bought the breakthroughs that were sought with the Northern Trust pairing of Nitin and first time wicket keeping Banerjee combining to remove opener Scarborough for 9 and then Nitin and Haigh working in tandem to run out Porter, again for 9.

The regular change of bowlers after two over stints continued throughout the UKGI innings, until the 10th over, when Haigh noticed he could keep himself on and have a bowl at a new batsmen, although this disappointingly proved to be to no avail as Haigh finished with figures of 0 for 13 from 3.

The UKGI batsmen continued to work the ball around, scoring runs at a steady pace with few boundaries, but also getting out with regularity. After 11 overs UKGI had their 5th and 6th batsmen at the crease thanks to the off spin of Carib Cordey grabbing two wickets. The score at this stage was 56.

At this point the UKGI score accelerated quickly, helped by the wide bowling of Carib Rayner and costly bowling of Carib Moss plus the introduction of Dolli who across two innings managed to find the boundary 10 times and amass a total of 56 runs not out. A brief spell by Berry taking a wicket and a final over wicket for Nitin left the Caribs chasing a total of 138.

Haigh asked Caribs Rayner and Ringer Banerjee to pad up, which they did with great enthusiasm. One minute later common sense reared its head and UKGI elected to b, sorry, I copied too much text there. Banerjee opened the batting with a solid single, before witnessing a typical Carib Beer Xi batting collapse, Rayner, Cordey and Berry all fell for 0 before batsmen extraordinaire Haigh came to the crease. A long battle between bat and ball ensued; the fielding of UKGI was particularly impressive, especially the 3 fielders wearing Carib outfits who seemed to take great delight in ensuring the game slipped further and further from the Carib's grasp as the number of dot balls accumulated.

Despite the growing pressure, neither Haigh nor Banerjee would give up their wicket, and both retired in quick succession. Whilst in the middle, it should be noted that a few Carib batmen commented on Banerjee's elegant stroke play, so without wishing to put an item on the agenda for next years AGM, it seems he may secure an invitation for full status.

These retirements allowed Carib Moss to come to the crease and repeat the earlier disasters of Carib Rayner and go for a first ball duck before other Caribs came and went without too much scoring. Late in the innings the Caribs needed 45 from the final 3 overs, despite both Haigh and Banerjee returning due to their earlier not outs and a late cameo of 14 from 12 by Carib Nitin combined with an extraordinary 8 extras in the final over from Dolli, it all proved too much and the Caribs ended with a measly total of 104 and a 34 run defeat.

It should be noted that due to a distinct lack of availability the score book resembled Michael J Fox's colouring book with countless scribbles, adjustments and lines pointing to where figures should have been placed as Carib Rayner turned his hand to scoring. At the end of play it actually looked like 30 runs had mysteriously disappeared, although it was soon realized that adding the scores of not out batsmen was an important element to the final total and all figures were back in line, from Carib Rayner's perspective this was a small price to pay as it did mean that fielding duties could be avoided.

The days play was finished with a lovely ceremony as Carib Rayner was handed his Man of the Year award for last season. Hopefully a photo of this momentous event will find its way to the Carib Web Site and replace the image of Carib Rayner with his Barbadian double bagger that currently graces his online profile.

As is customary, a select few Caribs retired to a local boozer to lick their wounds and watch with envy as the opposition drank their success. The minute dissection of the earlier evenings exploits from the Indian contingent began in earnest and will likely continue for several days, or at least until Virat Kohli comes out to bat and tries to replicate Dolli's high scoring. The final note is that after all this, it now means the Caribs have lost two from two, and in both cases the defeats were to teams that had been beaten in the opening fixtures of last year. In another twist of fate our third match is also against our third match opponents from last year, Northern Trust, so more copying and pasting of match reports will likely occur.

The premonition is that both Nitin and Banerjee will be abused by their NT colleagues for turning out against them, but this is a better outcome than receiving a "doesn't meet requirements" from their management in end of year appraisals if they did.

Carib Beer XI Lose by 34 Runs

Scorecard