May 29th – 6th XI vs Fonthill Park

It is rare that your correspondent is forced to refer to Roget’s thesaurus to look for adjectives to describe Dulwich 6th XI’s bowling performance this afternoon in their tour fixture against Fonthill Park. However, your correspondent was, for once, at a loss for words: fortunately, Professor Roget was, as always, his reliable self in finding the right words:

Excrement, ullage, ordure, putrescence, effluvia, dung, guano and faeces are just some of the words that could be used to describe this performance, which was some way short of the standard required standard needed to stem the flow of runs gushing from Fonthill Park’s batsmen. Skipper Smith resembled nothing less than the Chief Executive of British Petroleum:

Desperate to find a high tech solution to stop the this haemorrhaging of runs that came from the bats of Wilson, Street and Rawlinson. Only David Hawes, toiling away from the log end, showed the necessary parsimony with figures of 7-0-25-1. All  other bowlers used, would probably prefer to have a D Notice and a 30 year embargo of silence placed upon their bowling figures. Whether Dulwich’s performance was attributable to the copious amounts of Wadsworth’s 6X consumed in the bar of the George Hotel the night before, or a marked lack of ability to bowl with a ball that, at times, resembled nothing more than a bar of Lux toilet soap is a matter of conjecture.

Dulwich’s batsmen set about the mammoth task of passing the total of 286 or 273 or 278 – our Greek scorer for the day, one Pan Pylas, apparently incapable of deciding how many Fontwell Park had actually scored. This was clearly a reflection of his own country’s current finacial mismanagement.

Manish Nanda attempted to atone for a bowling performance that can only be described as “C-” by splatting the ball to most parts of Wiltshire and Somerset with gay abandon before finally succumbing to a straight ball from Rawlinson on 91. Peters weighed in with 24 but many of the other batsmen lacked the necessary panache, effervescence and brio to get up to Fonthill’s blistering scoring rate and Dulwich finally ran out of overs 100 runs short of the total.

Nevertheless, a grand day was had by all in sylvan rural splendour and we look forward to many further clashes on this quite beautiful, rustic Cricket Ground.