The recently honoured Colonel Mustard, reports for your delectation on the Bays seventh indoor match of season 22/23, in his resplendent new claret with mustard trim, quilted, Alibaba pixie-style slippers. (Ones, if you can’t imagine them already by now, with turned up, curly, pointy ends, terminating with jaunty festive and rather daring, highly buffed bronze crotal bells – and before you can insinuate pantomime-like, that he’s not, I feel I must reply to you, ‘Oh Yes he is!’)
Well, my fellow Baysites, if I may be so thoroughly bold as to term you, the New Year has spankingly well arrived with a certain degree of poignant splendour. All the jolly twinkling light festivities are now thankfully blurring myalgically or is it myopically into the recent and soon, no doubt distant past as they have always done so, to be filed most carefully in the double-bagged mental dustbin of all things to be forgotten forthwith. Christmas, Yuletime, or Jól as I like to call it, is a mere 11 months or so away already and the days are lengthening their stride once more. Even so, winter’s cold and severe damp, still grips the land vice-like, making it most unfit for all civilised sports, such as that played by the Bays; that is cricket if you perchance were still wondering. But before you have any chance of hearing the crack of leather on willow as well as the bizarre and most uncalled for expletive that happens to be, ‘cat shit!’* on the cricket field once more, it’ll feel as though it’s time to put those blasted decorations and that hideous environmentally unfriendly plastic tree up once more. And so it goes on – round and round and so on and so on…
This indoor season, remember, started as long ago as last year, with two of the most magnificent and glorious wins that were reported here most splendidly and sadly nowhere else; wins that seemed to herald in the new and youthful dashing monarch, most fittingly. It seemed to the masses of flag-waving Bays supporters that further unbridled glory in the Carolean Age was beckoning and that League Division Three was at the mercy of the seemingly ever changing six that has represented the team this year. It just wasn’t to turn out that way though and the loses, unlike the trains, seem to keep coming and coming to the great dismay of all at the club and no doubt to the Bays’ number one fan, our most majestic of majesties, King Charles III himself.** (& Korky the Cat of course – we don’t want to put his squarish, feline nose out again)
Now, this organ isn’t the place to discuss various things that aren’t of a crickety nature, but I’m going to break my ancient golden rule here and now, to go off piste, just for a bit, if you like. Rumours in the tabloid press, of my prospective inclusion in the New Years Honours list are, my friends, I’m afraid, a little premature to date. I was naturally hoping for a proper ‘big one’ as you know, but that twenty-four carat dream, has yet to materialise, for a couple of dash blinking reasons. The post I was hoping to have a good tilt at, was, now please keep this under your brown hat, none other than that of the Duke of Sussex and Much Marcle. It transpires that the present incumbent, a bit of a spare by his own admission and some well to do self-opiniated johnny to boot, has despite all his best efforts failed to leave the said position. The blighter is still clinging on for some inexplicable reason, by his highly manicured almost regal finger nails. Well, it’s just not good enough, I say! The Sussex thing would be nice I grant you, but to get to grips with old Marcle as well, cripes, that’s real the prize I’m seeking. Few people know that Much Marcle is home to Westons Cider and that
the village’s Noggin Farm no less, won the prestigious 2012 Flavours of Herefordshire “Sausage of the Year.” Come on Harry or Harold old boy, or whatever you call yourself, move over and let someone with a little more class and respectability and I hasten to add a tad more mustardyness, take on the role. I can jolly well eat a Chocolate Bath Oliver, cut a ribbon of any thickness and drink Bolly champers by the trough, as well as the next man, but more importantly, I can keep the old craw clamped shut and keep all the Bays’ dirty laundry (there are tons of it I can tell you) padlocked tightly in the giant wicker basket on the landing of Bays House. What more in the name of WG Grace himself, can I do for a gong, I ask you?
Cloud Cuckoo Land is both a meteorological and ornithological mystery and is at this time, the place where Bays followers may wish to find themselves, at this wholly unasked for hiatus of unprecedented indoor losses. Well, I have a little advice to you all. Just get over your morose ponderings! Nothing good will come of down-hearted , skulking, sulking and general moping about and all the associated mumbling and grumbling in your beard that you’re not going on tour, because of these loses or indeed, one of a number of other futile excuses. There will, mark my words, be a most glorious dawning, when shafts of bright sunshine will penetrate the overbearing sombre leadened clouds of defeat. Sooner or later, mark my words, a time will be thrust upon us, when the Bays mighty standard will once more be unfurled and raised to flutter triumphant, over the lofty granite crenellated parapets of Castle Cricket. By jingo, how could you doubt it? And then the ‘non-tourers’ will start coming out of the woodwork and signing up for Stomach Pump III (Scillonian) before you can say Salix alba Caerula.
Now before I go too far, I’ll get straight to the game. Could the Bays carry on losing, or could they register a win at last? But before I rush wildly into the match report per se, I need to inform you the reader of yet more important breaking news, that of another walrus being tempted to our shores. Scarborough and then Blythe in Northumberland, played host to Thor the walrus, whom I have been told on good authority, was making his own particular way to The Isles of Scilly for the ‘Tour of 23.’ Wally has clearly spread the ‘walrus word’ in the Svalbard region that Bays cricket, is the top pick for any walrus’s ‘Grand Tour’ – to finish their education, before they er hum, get too long in the tooth (or tusk). If Thor can sign up to the tour then there’s no excuse for you not to! To the game, for goodness sake, to the game…
With the temperatures plummeting once more, the mighty Bays finally shrugged the monkey of five consecutive loses off their backs. Another win ensued tonight, to put that coiled spring back in the step of the players and their millions of followers. Now, the team, as seems to be the norm these days, was once again slightly different, with Tom Liley being ruled out, due to a muscle-pull.
Indoor Capuccino, Chris, VP number 2 Horner, lost the spin and managed to get the Bays in the field, even though having no part in the decision. One Whitminster player deputising for his captain took responsibility for his part in this procedure, asking Jim, their captain who had
already made his way to the field, ‘What shall I call?’ He listened to Jim Hyland for the reason Jim clearly knows his heads from tails.
Cook and Reilly opened for Whitminster steadily, if not dynamically. No wickets falling in the first four overs, but only 22 runs posted. Belgium beer expert Alex Van Dyke made the breakthrough though in the fifth over, having Cook well caught off the side wall by Angus The Gun Guthrie with the score up to 29.
Fran ‘I can Catch’ Stirrup then winkled Reilly out, with a brilliant reflex catch at below ankle height and some way to his left, with the score only 5 more and now 34. The perplexed Reilly left acknowledging the bowler’s athleticism, flexibility, dexterity, generosity, humility and class etc. Adi Rai’s most perceptive comment that it was the best indoor catch he’d seen in all the years he’d been paying match fees, 12 years that is, surely says it all! Even Hugh Jardon in the press balcony wielding an original 1930’s ‘Grandstand’ BBC external broadcast camera, seemed to be moved. Shaking his head in disbelief, he was heard to mutter in his hipster beard, ‘Oh my Days!’ (Surely, ‘Oh, my Bays!’ would have been a tad batter)
Alex Beetle Man Van Dyke then had Johns play on in the very next over. The batsman managed a tiny snick (which no one but the focused and all seeing keeper had noticed), before allowing the ball to continue onwards to impact the stumps forcibly, akin to the meteorite strike that swept the dinosaurs from the planet some 65 million years previous. Angus playing to bring the average age of the team down, then returned for the next over, for the irrepressible Van Dyke to sharply run out Yoyte, the score now only 53. In the penultimate over, Steve the Abbot Liley managed to just nick a bail off, to stump Jim Hyland for a duck, off Adi Rai’s bowling. With three balls left. Helliwell was run out for 4, by Captain Horner, to round off a fine fielding display by the Bays. Whitminster posted just 62.
Chris Horner and Adi Rai opened for the Bays and did so with great assurity; assurity that hadn’t been seen since the year before. 10 runs in the first over by Chris alone saw the Bays race away like a dragster (not Drag Star before you ask – we’re not going down that route here thank you very much!) on a highly bleached track. The next over went for just 5 runs, but that was more than enough in the context of the game. Reilly then went for 8 in the next, with Chris on 19 and Adi just 4. Cook bowled the fifth, but the runs kept coming with another 9 on the board and the score up to 34. Chris left the field unbeaten on 25 on the last ball of the 5th over bowled by Yoyte and now just 23 were needed.
Fran Stirrup playing as sensibly as any man being sensible, left one ball down the leg side to be left gaping open-mouthed in wonderment, that it wasn’t given as a wide. It didn’t matter as Adi had picked up his scoring since Chris departed for the packed and unruly viewing platform. A well driven four to the back wall and a number of singles saw Adi reach 22, before Stirrup hit a solid single into the side wall to reach the necessary total. The Bays were home and dry with 63 in eight overs and one ball.
Wild celebrations were already taking place in town as the players made their way to The Rotunda for a post match beverage. In The Lower High Street, no less than five police vehicles were trying to sort out the spontaneous mayhem caused by delirious supporters of the Bays after their team’s impressive victory. Scenes akin to Argentina’s celebrations after their World Cup win, were well underway, here in little Cheltenham. A spokesman for the Bays kitted out in a fine twill tweed jacket from Lewis and deerstalker flaps still atop, with a disgusting smouldering meerschaum, standing on the frost encrusted pavement outside Bayshill House, denied that an open top bus tour of Cheltenham would be taking place the very next day at 11am. Tickets, he said were not available at the current time, but he would be happy to take a pony in the hand, to sort out a front row place.
* Cat shit, which is frequently shouted on the cricket field, should of course be spoken more clearly. H. Secombe’s weighty tome, The Cricketers’ Guide to the Intestinal Linguistics of the Modern Game, suggests it should be delivered most carefully, ‘Catch (note the space reader) it!’
** Korky The Cat disputes that King Charles III is Bays’ number one fan, suggesting it is he, alone, the feline cricketing connoisseur of the modern day. Please do not use the phrase of, ‘Catch it’ (see above) anywhere near Korky for obvious reasons.
*** Excuses for not going on tour have in the past ranged from the ridiculous to the preposterous. Examples here (with a rating) that have already been given are listed here. If for some reason you need one at short notice to present to the Chairman use one at your peril. The answer you’ll probably receive is next to your chosen excuse…
1/ I’ve used up all my holiday entitlement already (take some time from next year or do the decent and obvious thing: go off sick) Rating 1 – pathetic
2/ I’ve no money (stop eating, drinking, paying the leccy & don’t use trains even if you can find one that’s moving, as they’re too expensive anyway / start betting any money you have on greyhounds with bizarre names beginning with the letter B or on Euromillions) Rating 2 – pathetic(ish)
3/ I’m still working and can’t get the time off (poppycock – you’re probably in charge and can do as you like) Rating 2 – Ridiculous & pathetic (anyone can see through that shambolic one)
4/ I’m too old (get a grip man, there’s always time for one last and final hurrah! If mobility is your problem, remember that the bat is only a type of stick. It can be used to propel you pole-vault like, between the wickets. Plus if your sight is failing as well, paint the blessed thing white and ask the keeper politely when the bowler happens to be running in.) Rating 1 – pathetic (and don’t pretend you’ve lost your glasses and couldn’t read this)
5/ I don’t like the Bays and all their players are n’er do wells and Herberts (Well I’m so sorry, I hope my breathing doesn’t offend you too much) Rating 5 – Well thought out though, pithy, honest and straight to the point. You can, as this week’s winner, choose either a Blue Peter Badge or a Crackerjack pencil and go on a long holiday to a very warm place instead, for about a third of the price. You should go very far, I promise you.
**** Salix alba Caerula is the Cricket Bat Willow a hybrid of White Willow and Crack Willow. Presumable the crack part allows the bat to make that distinctive sound, when it thwacks the cherry. (nb – this is a weak attempt at a joke by the Colonel – please ignore completely, to prevent any encouragement in this direction)