Twenty - Weston Creek Cricket Club

Weston Creek, Cricket ClubOnce again, the ball eluded the probing bat and glanced offmy left pad past the wicket-keeper. As I scurried through forthe treasured relief of the non-striker's end, I was taken abackto see the umpire's index finger rigidly aloft.Afterwards I questioned the youthful official about thedecision, suggesting that the ball had struck me well outsidethe line of the leg stump. "Yeah I know," he answered with ashrug, "but it was his third appeal against you!" I made surethat this young man was "promoted" to the role of scorer forthe remainder of the season.My colleagues fared little better than I did. In much less thanan hour, we were dismissed for 21, Jimmy Nuttall top scoringwith 3. Sundries totalled 8. Brett Hannam finished with 8-6.We were invited to follow on by their captain, in spite ofprotests from most of his teammates, who wanted to adjournimmediately to the adjacent clubhouse bar. In hopeful silenceI sympathised profoundly with their pleas. In vain.We did slightly better in the second innings, this timereaching 22. Of that impressive total I scored 15, including asix and two fours somewhere over square leg. Only threeother batsmen troubled the scorers.In the two innings we managed 33 runs off the bat, yetremarkably no batsman bagged a pair. Indeed two batsmenmanaged to avoid a duck in either innings. Young Hannamwould have had a good chance of receiving the man-of-thematchaward if there had been one; his match figures were15-12.Such was my auspicious beginning as a captain, a job Ihappily continued for several years until other commitmentsforced me to step down. Eventually, in December, 1984, a44