Carib Beer XI vs UKGI, Battersea Park,

Thursday 22nd June 2017

Another new opposition for the 2017 season were the UKGI team. The connection to the Carib being through Dodger Michael Dollin who kindly agreed to stop inflicting the yearly beating on the Carib by the Dodgers and instead find a more well match opposition. The result was a mix of people from the government UKGI office, which as it turned out did lead to a close match.

Due to various last minute drop-outs the Caribs were down to just 6 Carib members and only enough time to find one ringer - the fair-dinkum Aussie ringer Matt Porter, returning to play for the Caribs again. In the vain hope that some more Caribs would turn up there was an uncontested toss and the Caribs were sent in to bat. The opening pair of bowlers were pretty tidy, with UKGI opening with a maiden in an relatively uneventful spell. Meanwhile his UKGI opening bowling partner Callard was wreaking havoc, despite this being his first ever cricket match, his preparatory net sessions must have been very extensive. A wicket in his first over saw Carib Bowen softly lob one up to the point area, but the drama was to follow in the 6th over of the innings. Carib Moss and ringer Porter were rebuilding following the early loss, but both were dismissed in similar circumstances from consecutive balls, first ringer Porter having hit a couple of boundaries went for another big hit and was caught at the midwicket fence. The batsmen had crossed, and Carib Moss perished in a similar manner the next ball, although his attempt at a slog, only made it as far as mid-on where the fielder held on. This left 2 new batsmen at the crease, both yet to face. Carib Holmes was to face the potential hat-trick ball, but surely the UKGI man couldn't take a hat trick in his first ever match. The ball cannoned straight into the pad of Carib Holmes, who is fast becoming as likely as Shane Watson to be likely to be trapped lb. Carib Weaver who was umpiring deliberated long and hard, before raising his finger to send Carib Holmes back to the pavilion for a golden duck and the final ball of the hat-trick for the UKGI man.

Carib Shaun/Shawn/Sean/Swanand was the next to depart in somewhat comedic/tragic circumstances. Having already surviving being dropped second ball without scoring he was beginning to become frustrated by the now less tidy UKGI change bowlers. UKGI Woodward bowled an over at Swanand of wide-noball-noball-noball. Eventually the UKGI man managed to find the pitch, prompting Swanand into an almighty hack, he totally missed the ball, which then flicked his pad, before cannoning into the stumps for a most unlikely wicket.

This meant with 5 wickets down and only 7 players our last two batsmen were at the crease. Fortunately for the Caribs the in-batsmen were ideal for the situation, being Carib chairman and best batsman Carib Haigh and dot-botherer new Carib treasurer Carib Weaver. Mr Haigh hit a few early glorious boundaries in the point and cover region before UKGI realised this was his strong area and moved their best fielders to these locations. It had only taken Martin 10 balls to reach 19 runs, but he then faced a large number of dots leaving him just shy of what would have been only the third ever in Carib history. In fairness due to the lack of numbers and the failing of the top order it was correct to try and bat out the overs. Carib Weaver was actually ticking along nicely at the other end, despite Martin's hogging of the strike. Andy's dismissal being somewhat unfortunate for him with it being a spectacular one-handed catch by the mid-off fielder when the ball looked to already have passed him. The UKGI skipper kindly allowed Carib Holmes to have a second innings where he yet again faced a strong lbw shout first ball. The umpire clearly took pity on him, not wishing to make Alex surely the first person in Carib history to get a king pair in the same innings. Caribs Haigh and Holmes then managed to bat out the remaining overs, leaving us on a respectable score of 115-6, which was a good recovery from 28-4.

For the second week in a row, most of the opposition were drinking throughout, which left the Caribs with a sniff of a chance, though we were somewhat limited in our bowling options with talk of Carib Bowen having to down his keeping gloves and bowl at some point. We also felt we couldn't borrow half the UKGI team to field for us, so we were short on fielders too. An indication of the lack of bowling options was that alongside regular opening bowler Carib Swanand his opening bowling partner was Carib Moss, who was called upon to bowl his dobbers right from the start. Swanand was his usual tidy self, with a good opening spell of 1-9, including a smart caught behind dismissal, before he was removed from the attack so we could save his overs for later. Carib Moss, bowled his usual mix of wides and slow balls in the right area but were so slow that they were easily dispatched for four, resulting in him too being removed from the attack.

Third man in for UKGI was McInnes who elected to shun the offer of the loan of a regular batting helmet and instead wore a bright, shiny gold cycling helmet which offered no protection at all to the face area and led to half-hearted carib protests on how shiny a helmet can be in cricket before it is illegal. UKGI were building a strong partenership between Morris and McInnes, before Morris retired on 28, having only bothered with 4s from his seven scoring shots. Fortunately for the Caribs this exposed the middle order of the UKGI and regular wickets followed for our change bowlers of Aussie ringer Matt, Carib Haigh and Carib Weaver, including a smart stumping from Mr B.

The game was very much in the balance at this point, but at this point we needed to return to the bowling of Carib Moss. Unfortunately in the rare event of being offered his full quota of 4 overs he had to turn it down. During his opening spell in an effort to try and bowl a bit quicker Moss somehow picked up a side-strain injury, meaning that even despite his two overs going for 19 the Carib still needed him to bowl some more. This meant we needed Carib Bowen to bowl, so having spent 5 minutes taking off all his wicketkeeping gear, Mr Haigh changed his mind and elected to bring back Swanand to finish his spell. Swanand bowled even better, finishing up with 3-11 including a smart caught and bowled. Obviously you never drop them off your own bowling, Swanand had actually dropped a catch at the boundary with a nonchalant effort and Carib Moss (blaming his injury) also dropped a catch on the stretch.

So with 24 still required from the final 4 overs the game was still very well poised. Ringer Matt had a couple of overs left, and he bowled a fantastic 19th over - a wicket maiden including the dismissal of the well-set batsmen UKGI Carter. Not ideally wicketkeeper Bowen was called upon to bowl the 18th and 20th overs of the innings, having bowled in the nets 14 months ago, he wasn't in the best of practice, and given this bowled decently. Unfortunately for the Carib UKGI Gorrie was at the crease and was well set, so was able to pick out some gaps in the sparse field for some crucial boundaries. So the Caribs lost with just 4 balls to spare, another close game in this season of close matches.

We then headed off to the usual post-match pub near Battersea Park station where the Caribs donated the match ball to the UKGI hat trick hero. We look forward to our next encounter with the UKGI team.

Carib Beer XI Lose by 3 Wickets

Scorecard