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Friday Night- After having put the latest addition to the Garrick family to bed I decided to have a quick look on Facebook to see how the Nostell lads were preparing for the next days relegation match with Hooton Pagnell (who will now be referred to as Hoots). I noted two things: Uncle Ken was being grumpy and threatening to delete “friends” from his account…. “Are you sure you can afford to do that Uncle?” I asked, Jimmy was answering in his sarcastic tone… all is well in the land of Nostell CC I cooed to myself as I drifted off to sleep.

I turned up at the ground early Saturday to give young VC a hand to get the ground ready, first job was getting some diesel for the roller, second job was to call the King of Kirby, Dale, to get him to bring an extension cord to the club. “What for he asked?”… how do you answer that one I thought!. The king arrived shortly after to get the score box sorted, all whilst being supervised by Big Rich. I noticed that Ruth was busy preparing egg sandwiches for tea, The Hoots batsmen are in for a smelly treat later in the day I noted.

The captain strode out and won the toss and decided we would have a bat. We were missing the ginger, who was off attending a course on how to manage a glass body, and the saviour of Nostell CC who was off being revered by another country for the week. (How do you say “Are you Lee Hurst?” in Spanish?).

Myself and the Filthy Tourist opened the innings and got us through to 63 when I uncharacteristically tried to run one through slips and was caught for 28. Big Rich came and went, while adding to the fines coffers, The King had trouble getting the score going, FT bought up his first 50 for the year before he was caught and bowled for the half century exactly. Neil did not trouble the scorers, Mal had little effect and we were looking shaky at 120 for 7 when the King of Kirby joined Young YC. Together these two played magnificently, with hard running and sensible batting getting us to 198 for 9 at the close. Young YC knocked up 46, KOK was left 42 not out and three pints richer. Hoots skipper Dyke picked up 6 cheap wickets in a spell of controlled bowling.

The Hoots reply got off to t poor start when the KOK mixed up foot breakers (unfortunately his own foot as the ball was pitched that short) with unplayable balls, and it was two unplayable that got us into a winning position after YC has the 17 year old protege well caught by Simon “Haircut” Roberts, KOK then had the number 3 trapped LBW in front much to the annoyance of the batsman who felt that the ball was not hitting exactly in the middle of the middle stump and therefore he should not have been given out… a theme that was to continue throughout the Hoots innings. KOK then produced a Jaffa to knock the off peg over to send the number 4 packing. Uncle Ken came on and tied one end up while YC and FT attacked from the other end. Between the three of them they wrapped the innings up, with FT adding 4 for 20 to his 50 runs. Uncle picked up 2 for 36 and YC 2 for 26. KOK ended with 2 for 31 to add to his growing status of being a Nostell all rounder (I am sure I heard him say Leroy who!). Hoots only managed 126 in reply.

So our first win of the season, and a very hard fought one at that. The only down point was three more dropped catches, something which will be rectified at training this week.

Well done to all.

Up the Eagle.