Match Summary
The Twenty Minuters deployed on Dundonald Park on a warm-but-take-your-jumper kind of day in June, for its first experience of a return match. Spirits were high, but as Skip was quick to point out, spirits were high on 1st June 1916, and look how that ended up. After loitering around the wrong pitch for a few minutes, quaffing a few looseners hastily purchased at the local wine shop, things got underway. Skip lost the toss, then tried to palm the oppo skip's quid. Presumably he was confused by being put in to bat and not being able to talk his way out of it. This had never happened to the 20minuters before. But nor had they ever deployed a batsman of the calibre of L Willis. After eleven dot balls, Baker went mad, dancing down the track, failing to connect and the bails were off. Robert Key would have applauded, but we just laughed. Then Willis went to work: leg-glances, flashy drives, sweeps, big blows back over the bowler's head, in a word, 'proper'. Maxwell-Scott played bravely for his 5 off 28, Greayer similarly for his 2 off 10. Willis didnŐt need the appalling lack of ability around him to look good, but he got it nonetheless. Skip joined the party briefly (before getting a top-drawer twister that pitched outside leg and clipped top of off) as did R Scott, who appeared to have confused cricket with golf, again. Willis eventually holed out, but by this time the 20minutes were beginning to feel sorry for the opposition. They were mostly young shavers (some promising) after all. But the carnage continued, as Cannon, with his now legendary hostility towards youth, blazed away. Passing 200, the 20minuters made their highest innings total by some distance.
After Adam's teas (fantastic, for many a culinary highlight of the calendar year) the 20minuters returned to the park with the kind of complacency that gets men killed. Extras have long been a thorn in the side of the team, typically comprising 25% of the opposition's total. We had thought the worst behind us. Y Ahmed, to put it frankly, had a shocker. Distant memories of past glories and a bowling action that worked weren't enough on this occasion, and several records were set - not the good ones. Fortunately the rest of the attack was firing: Scotto's short stuff was almost unplayable, and Cannon bowled brilliantly without reward, which he took to be a direct insult from God. But Ahmed's gips had left the 20minuters a bowler short, and Willis's variations between leg-spinners and slow-medium had proved frighteningly expensive. Characteristically, it was the Skipper who put his hand up. As he began his two-yard run-up, no one, least of all himself, was sure whether it would be the infamous leg-spin or the military medium. Whatever it was, it got the breakthrough, with the help of a miracle catch at point by Lloyd-Baker. It was drama of the highest kind. Then R Scott, as is his wont, gatecrashed the party by claiming a scalp of his own. From there, the professionals took over and ensured the required run-rate was never likely. A narrow margin of victory, but nevertheless a first and historic one for the 20minuters.
