Yeah, You’re Just Going To Have To Read This

Red Dogs 158 & 2/51 def PDCC 162 & 43

S. Undries 45, R. Chinthamuneedi 24, A Summers 23

A Panju 4/45(12), M Boys 3/26(7), A Whittle 2/19(3.4)

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Well uh yeah so… look I don’t know how to explain this one. At the end of the day it’ll go down as a loss but there’s so much to this story that I really don’t know where to begin.

I guess I should begin at the start when we made the road trip out to Ivor Marsden Park, a ground backing onto the RAAF base in Amberley. Now, I don’t mean to toot my own horn about how good I am at geography, but last time I checked Ipswich wasn’t considered Northside. But nonetheless, this was the venue of this week’s C Grade Northside clash against the Red Dogs Cricket Club.

Beside the matter of classification, the ground was picturesque. A freshly rolled turf pitched looked enticing on the backdrop of a strip where planes I have no knowledge of, but am told are impressive, landed intermittently.

I digress. It comes as no surprise that Captain Corrigan’s run of luck had to end when it came to the toss, as the Doctors were sent in to bat.

The Doctors were out to make a statement, a fashion statement, with the fresh off the plane club shirts but instead I think we made a very different statement.

An errant shot by Panju saw the end of him, good bowling from Lewis saw Douglas depart in his final innings before departing for his rural stint. Boys couldn’t match his heroics from Toowong before Chinthamuneedi, Shahid, Prakash and Summers provided some resistance in the middle. The Doctors were rolled for 162 with an hour of play left of Day 1.

So out we came and gave it our all, Boys the chief destroyer bowling in the corridor of chaos and creating all sorts of problems picking up three wickets in no time with Panju picking up the last one to close play with Red Dogs finishing on 4/65.

Now this is the curse of playing over two weekends, because a week is a long time my friend and a lot can happen. In fact, this week a lot did. As previously mentioned Douglas was a million miles away, but closer to home, Boys managed to pick up an injury on a super top secret spy mission that he was probably on, I don’t know, it’s the most likely explanation. Less spectacularly Summers succumbed to that dreaded foe, the pneumonia and the only thing he’d be keeping was a box of tissues next to him.

With two men down, and all our subs used, it was fortunate that both Boyd and Sharma were willing to play as sub fielders, this proved vital is defending the first innings total.

Kazi would take the gloves behind the stumps and it would be a spinning day with Panju running rings around the opposition, the highlight being rope-a-doping the captain with a perfectly placed wrong’un that he didn’t offer a shot to as he watched it spin back and take his middle stump.

Whittle would come in and finish the job and the Doctors took first innings points with four runs to spare.

The end.

If only.

Now this is where it all gets a bit blurry and I really don’t know how to make this sound better than it was.

The Doctors would come out to bat for their second innings with the objective to treat it like finals and be patient. Clearly no one took that advice.

Whittle was dismissed for a 3rd ball duck off a hooping inswinger from the left hander that pitched on off and hit him right in front. Perera would pull a Perera and really if you don’t know what that is by this point have you really ever seen the man play? He did make mid-on move a little bit this time, if that’s any consolation.

Shahid would play a shot out of frustration to try and get the upper hand but just ended up hitting it up to mid-off. Panju would edge a good bowl from the 14-year-old leg spinning prodigy that somehow managed to stick in the hand of first slip. Barker would be controversially dismissed after #glovegate (we don’t talk about that anymore) and Prakash would be bowled.

Pham received a reprieve after the opposition captain withdrew an appeal after he was given out off a deflection off his thigh pad. Corrigan would be unlucky after the ball ricocheted off his pad on to the stumps and Pham would be the final man out when he was bowled by the opposition captain. With Boyd and Sharma unable to bat that signalled the early end to the batting innings.

This left an hour of play with a minimum of 14 overs for Red Dogs to chase down a mere 43 runs… yeah that’s right… 43. We didn’t even make enough runs to secure an extra half point. Anyway, long story short, we nearly did it, with the Red Dogs winning with about 5 minutes of play left. And that concludes this bizarre story of the day we were reverse outrighted. I hope you all enjoyed it because I’m still confused. But hey, what’s new, right?

#2017 #loss #pdcc #med #uq #medicine #cricket