Northern Trust vs Carib Beer XI, Greenwich Park,

Thursday 15th June 2017

Tonight’s game would be against the Northern Trust Bank, the employers of our very own Graham Gooch lookalike, Carib Gooch. NT are a team that regularly hand our backsides to us, but are a generally good bunch of guys and who take the recent playing condition, enforced as part of our agreeing to continue playing them, of getting completely plastered by the end of the game, very seriously indeed.

Sadly, as is all to frequent of late, Carib Gooch was forced to pull out at the last minute, citing work commitments, so would be unable to engage in the witty banter and other such politically incorrect sledging as is expected when facing your co-workers, much to the chagrin of the opposition skipper who promised to intercede on Goochie’s behalf, by having a stern word with the CEO of that august organisation to ensure no repeat of the incident during future events.

Happily, it was another glorious afternoon as we began to arrive at Greenwich Park, warm and sunny, with even Carib Willis threatening to remove his coat and expose his delicate features to the elements. Less happily, for the Caribs, was the sight of the opposition team already opening tins of beer and passing round crates of unopened Fosters, and we stared longingly at our own tins, wrapped up in their bags, and rapidly warming in the sun, hoping that the NT boys would administer a quick thrashing upon us so we could join them in their libations. Entreaties were made to our captain, and leader, Martin Haigh, about the unfairness of it all, but the looks we received in return could have frozen every beer tin at the ground, so we resigned ourselves to another couple of hours of miserable sobriety as we began to prepare for the match.

With still only a few Caribs in attendance, our captain, and Chairman, Martin Haigh, sought out the opposition skipper to discuss the playing conditions. A stickler for the rules, the usual conditions were agreed, and our respective skippers, at the behest of Mr Haigh, retired to the middle to conduct the toss. Upon returning, it transpired that due to the lack of Caribs currently in attendance, a gentleman’s’ agreement had in fact taken place, and we would bat first. Whether this was a good thing would be determined by a) how quick we were bowled out or b) how soon they overhauled our score, as, from this vantage point, either of the two would need to occur before we could retrieve our beer from the fridge, and we were concerned only on which would proceed soonest. Nevertheless, bat we must, so our Captain, Martin Haigh, began the usual task of rounding up an opening pairing.

The first two Caribs to wear the pads would be the aging vice-skipper, Carib Rogerson, and regular, and keen ringer, Ringer Charnley, both fresh from scoring runs the previous week. Facing first, the old Carib medium pacer looked off to a good start clattering a quick boundary, however, the second over was taken by NT Jack, a young and quick pace bowler, who with the uneven bounce of the Greenwich wicket, proved a real handful. Attempting to see his second over out, and sure that he would be replaced by the genial NT skipper, the old Carib Vice Captain, Carib Rogerson, almost made it. Sadly, on only 5, the old timer succumbed to a quick ball that completely failed to bounce and fairly raced along the floor, taking out his middle stump, and sending the old boy, dejectedly, back to the boundary edge.

Order was restored as our Captain, Leader and Best Batsman, Martin Haigh, strode purposefully out to the middle, and indeed, the bowling was rotated, allowing the Caribs some respite. One benefit of facing the pacey young Jack early on was that we had accumulated quite a few extras already, as even the NT wicketkeeper had been troubled by the bounce, and at least two had sped away to the boundary, so even now, our score looked healthy. Nevertheless, both Caribs now began to build their innings and look increasingly assured at the crease.

[Web editor note - Sadly at this point our unreliiable match reporter ran out of steam and as such the detail of the rest of the match is now just a distant memory to all. From the scorecard we can see the Caribs made 113, which would normally be a straight forward target for NT vs the Caribs. However some good death bowling from Rogerson and Charnley led us to just our second ever win against NT, no doubt helped by them batting second and continuing to drink throughout meaning the quality of batting was not as good as their innings progressed. However the Caribs were pleased as this gave us our first win of the season, in yet another close match.]

Carib Beer XI Win by 2 Runs

Scorecard