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Match Reports for the Saturday Sixth ElevenSaturday 4th August 2007: away to NPL 1st X1
Dulwich 190/4 declared NPL 95 Dulwich won by 95 runs.
The year is 1588. As autumn turns to winter, the remnants of the Spanish Armada, chased northwards by the jolly English Jack Tars, have looped round Scotland and Ireland and are arriving back in Vigo, Santander and La Coruña in dribs and drabs, nearly six months after they set sail. And what a motley bunch they look. Their rigging torn by the harsh Atlantic winds, their bodies racked by hunger, thirst and disease, they cry for food and water as they strike land. The first to break away from the fleet are the first to make it home, while the flagship takes another six weeks to struggle back to a friendly port via a circuitous route. Some never make it at all, and seek shelter in Ireland, where they remain, happy to eat potatoes, sing repetitive songs, and sire suspiciously dark-featured children who would listen to their tales of woe and swear revenge on perfidious Albion. (Their descendants would succeed more than 400 years later by introducing Magners to the British market.) Much the same happened to Dulwich 6th XI on their way to play NPL at Old Hamptonians on Saturday, with the dehydrated masses falling out of their cars in the midday heat after abandoning their leader to an hour of drifting through south-west London’s best traffic jams. When he eventually arrived, the Duke of Medina Sidonia (Dulwich’s very own Mediterranean aristocrat Pan Pylas) won the toss and elected to bat. He chose Lieutenant Blench and Midshipman Owen (both of whom had been on board for about an hour, Blench apparently suffering the after-effects of a bad attack of seasickness the previous evening) to open the innings, and they quickly dropped anchor against an unthreatening bowling attack on a slow, flat pitch. Progress to 50 was quick enough, with Blench pulling strongly to the port boundary, but then both entered the doldrums and became seriously becalmed against even slower bowlers, who were difficult to get away. At this point, two of the merry shipmates of HMS Dulwich became so distressed by the situation that they began to see mirages, and amid cries of ‘Kronenbourg ahoy’ went absent without leave after being sent to the pavilion to see if any citrus-based refreshment could be found for the rest of the scurvy-ridden crew. Their return coincided with Owen walking the plank for a patient 27. Wills Grigg and Prosser perished in an attempt to up the run rate, but Dominic Edwards (24) came in and proved something of a destroyer, with a cannonball of a straight six being a particular delight. Blench proved the mainstay of the innings, and worked hard for a mast-erful 77*. Captain Pylas ordered a retreat to harbour on 190/4, slightly frustrated at the slow over rate, and averting the threat of a mutiny from Blench, whose sea-legs were beginning to look suspect. I’m now going to abandon the increasingly tiresome naval metaphor and just say what happened after a decent tea. Steve Carr showed the value of the ‘you miss, I hit, and if I miss, well you might just play on anyway’ school of bowling, and nipped the top four out, all bowled. They were never really in with a shout, though the fifth wicket pair hung around a while, before being separated when Dominic ‘came to the party’. David Mullaney also showed his invite and tucked into his jelly and ice cream, bowling even straighter than Steve did, if anything. Sooner or later they were all going to miss a straight one, and because we bowled lots of them, sooner or later they all did. Two tiny teenagers had us held up for quite a while for the eighth wicket, and we lost a bit of bowling and fielding focus, though David got a richly deserved third scalp when Blench managed to stay off his phone long enough to cop hold of one, and we snapped back into action. The return of Carr swept the game up. So a sixfer to gladden Carr’s heart on the long flight home, a comprehensive win for Dulwich, a few bruises for the keeper (whose response to Cap’n Pylas’s question of “aren’t you wearing a box?” after one particularly painful blow down leg side was largely unrepeatable, but approximated to “yes, skip, but it’s not a lot of use when it hits me square on the kneecap, old bean”), and a good time in the bar with the oppo afterwards. A phone call from Rear Admiral Smith confirmed the excellent results elsewhere, and all things considered, the journey home was rather more enjoyable than the journey there.
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