The first Sunday of our season dawned and luckily it was dry if not a tad breezy and chilly. As usual Chevening cried off with some excuse, so we set off to a new fixture full of optimism as we were apparently playing against a team of old gits and school kids, runs and wickets we all thought!
Unfortunately the school kids were mainly Woody-sized who specialised  in hitting boundaries and bowling quick and took a liking to our predominantly slow medium bowling attack. Oh and the majority of old gits on display actually played for Beechwood.

As we all arrived at a very picturesque village ground, not for us catches and throwdowns but instead we all fell victim to our equivalent of a Ronnie and Reggie extortion scam aka Lyn and Tina and the Austria tour raffle, amazing as it seems they even got money out of Woody, although it may have been the opposing team captain’s coin used for the toss, which of course Woody lost, we were in the field.

We were playing a 40 overs match (although your correspondent wasn’t aware until the drinks interval) almost immediately one of the opening batsmen who I was told was colour blind, had no problem seeing red against green and runs were flowing.

Cookie was brought on to replace Bashers and was unlucky to have two regulation catches dropped; we were looking every day of our old git status in the field. Bossy was then brought on for his comeback spell after the serious injury to his picking finger, first ball inviting full toss, well caught by Adrian, who writes Bossy’s scripts!

Unfortunately the inviting full toss then proved to be his stock delivery so Chris or Shatner as he is now known (TJ Hooker not Capt Kirk) was brought into the attack with Braders. The runs flowed whoever Woody turned to and after 25 overs we were chasing a daunting total, at the interval Woody took the gloves off Ian, and Woody, Ian and Braders all bowled well to keep us in the game.  222 for 7 could have been much worse.

After a decent tea, the highlight of which was Robbo asking Tina if she should be having another cake (how does he get away with it?), Woody asked Tony and Dean the ‘old firm’ (more Capt Mainwaring and Sgt Wilson than Rangers and Celtic, oh and I’m the tall one) to open up.
Beechwood got off to a positive start with a 49 run opening stand before Dean was yorked, Ade didn’t last long and Braders only provided a brief cameo, all the while Tony was batting purposefully and soon reached a pleasing half century.

For us to have a chance Tony needed to bat throughout, unfortunately it wasn’t to be.
Other notables during our innings were Robbo’s first ball four and then his out-staring the bowler, Cookie who I swear played an offside shot and a decent end of innings partnership between Woody and Shatner/Chris.

Beechwood managed a creditable 173 off of our 40 overs, in the circumstances well batted lads a good team effort.

Team: Bashford, Boss, Cooksley, Freeman, Hill, Kelly (w), McCrea (w), Robinson, Savory, Warner, Woodward (c)