Can't bear to watch

By The London Leprechaun
May 20 2011

London Leprechaun starts off with a prose. Comments on how it goes.  Our scorecard is poor. Looks like a negative score. But it may still turn out OK, who knows?

Now the Middlesex season this year

Has largely been full of good cheer

And although day one

Sounded not much fun

Hopefully it was just a one off “Oh dear”

So it’s off to Lord’s that I’m bent

And a really good day should be meant.

The sun it all bright

The trains are all right

So let’s hope for some Middlesex intent.

I’m afraid that is as far as I got with my plan to report on today’s play poetically; the kind of day we had does not lend itself to purple prose. Maybe the blues would be more appropriate!

Anyway various domestic tasks kept me occupied in the early morning, (including booking another Eurostar trip – in October and to Amsterdam though probably not to see any cricket!) and though the trains were OK, the buses were crawling up Gloucester Place and so I arrived about ten minutes into the day’s play.  Optimistically I checked the scoreboard to see if there had been a dramatic first couple of overs. Sadly that had not happened, and in spite of a bit of cloud and a distinct nip in the air Glamorgan settled in for a long bat. There were plenty of appeals, especially from Murts from the Nursery End, a lot of edges that did not carry, or ended up flying through the slips. Luck was on Glamorgan’s side until Bragg was given out to the most unlikely looking lbw appeal of the first hour. Not a decision he would want to boast about.  Glamorgan were not scoring freely – the bowling was accurate and the fielding mainly likewise, Rees took for ever to add the 20 or so to his overnight total before Murts got him with a far more convincing lbw shout.  So at lunch Glamorgan were not that far ahead and we could still contemplate getting back into the match.

Sadly that hope did not last long after lunch.  Dexter nearly became Captain Marvel, getting the second ball after the interval to keep a bit low, and Powell nicked through to the keeper, but Wallace came in with intent, and the run rate increased quickly courtesy of a few nicks, some involuntary shots, some intentional ones, one huge six, and a general milking of the runs as the wicket looked to be dying and flattening.  (Wait till we bat again said some diehard Middlesex pessimists.) As the afternoon wore on, edges got less, serious lbw appeals became few and far between and even an odd drop or two of rain did not stop Glamorgan getting a lot of runs rather quickly. 160 or so between lunch and tea.  Dexter kept rotating the bowlers, no one bowled badly but there was little threat.  The new ball made no difference – in fact all it seemed to do was make the ball get to the boundary quicker, and contribute to an alarming decline in our over rate.  It slid ever so quickly from minus two to minus five – yes five! – just before tea, and we did seem a bit slow to react to that, especially as by then it did not seem to matter who was bowling – Glamorgan were just going to go on and on and on.  Eventually a Dexter/Malan combination got it back to minus four just before tea, but the thought of possibly coming out of the match with minus points for the whole match was not a good one to be contemplating over a cuppa.

Post tea the umpires had kindly given another over back so we were only –only!  minus three.  And Glamorgan went on and on, Wright got a decent looking hundred, only to play a horrible shot and give Scott Newman the easiest of skied catches.  At least I think it was Scott Newman: he wore Anthony Ireland’s and Dan Housego’s shirts during the evening session – not sure if he was revealing a new shirt every time he took a layer off. Harris and Wagg played energetically, Croft was just typically stubborn, and Glamorgan went on and on and on and the lead grew and grew.  We started worrying that they might declare while we were still minus on the overs, just to make us bat tonight.  But they didn’t which either means that they think the wicket has died, or they think there is plenty of time to bowl us over the next two days. I suspect the latter.  And we ended up even on the over rate.

So not a good two days at the office.  But to take the positives from the day – the players kept going, OK they lost buzz during the day, but no one bowled very badly, and the fielding mainly held up right to the end. Yes there were a few misfields and a couple of overthrows but they did stay largely committed and keen. The wicket is not doing very much – the odd ball fizzed, one or two kept low, but not much was beating the bat by the end of the day. So with a batting line up that has Gareth Berg at 8 maybe we could bat a couple of days.  And one bad match will not the season define.

So maybe tomorrow they’ll cope

And our batting will not make us mope.

As we stay in all day

And near the end of May

We’ll still be unbeaten we hope.