With the team having convened in the sports centre, Captain Ed Cooper took his opportunity to let the team know that he would much rather be at the club screening of Death of a Gentleman than coming with us; a true showing of leadership and enthusiasm. However, the journey started well for Cooper as he managed to get off the university campus without stalling. Not to worry, normality was restored later in the journey as the engine cut out at a set of traffic lights, much to the delight of the rest of the team. Joe Chapple – a relative veteran of the indoor team with 2 caps under his belt – was on navigation duty as Cooper appeared to have little clue where we were going.
Our arrival at the legendary Connexion arena saw a standard warm up of lobbing the ball about a bit. This gave us a chance to explain the rules to debutant James Murphy, who took a little while to find his radar in the warm up with a few beamers being bowled. Cooper then went to toss up and with a Leek Wootton player yet to arrive, we bowled first.
Debutant Murphy opened the bowling and started strongly taking a wicket on his 3rd ball, only to be followed with a wicket for Charlie Turner in the second over. There was some confusion as a ball found its way through the side netting and it quickly became apparent that nobody really knew the rules, especially the umpire. There was further confusion to follow as Turner produced a pick up, turn and throw that could only be described as a work of art, ending suitably with a direct hit. Sensibly the umpire had moved well out of the way of the stumps but in his panic failed to see that the batsman was out. Captain Cooper, ever the sportsman, suggested that as he hadn’t seen it, he couldn’t give it out, to which the umpire eventually agreed. That turned out to be the high point of Cooper’s innings in the field. Two relatively straightforward catches came to him and he capably dropped both of them. This appeared to rub off on Ferdy who also shelled one, diving one handed. Luckily wicketkeeper Joe appeared to be able to catch, and some handy glove work saw him pick up 3 dismissals, including a sharp catch off a top edge. Thanks to the work of their one and only batsman, Leek Wootton made their way to a reasonable total of 73.
Ryan Chase and Joe Chapple opened the batting for UWMCC. They got us off to a disastrous start as Joe was run out without facing a ball. Thankfully, Captain Cooper was there to steady the ship, nerdling some threes flat batting a couple of fours before retiring. Opener Chase had a stroke of luck as he hit one straight back to the bowler only for a fielder to dive across him and drop a one handed chance. He then also went on to retire. Ferdy and Murphy saw us home with 11 balls to spare in what turned out to be a fairly comfortable chase.
The journey home was uninterrupted by stalling, as Cooper appears to be slightly closer to mastering driving the van. Having made it to the petrol station unscathed, he then took a long look at the unleaded pump only to then decide that actually diesel was a better idea. He proceeded to struggle putting the nozzle in and made a little puddle on the floor. Everyone then went their separate ways, happy with another good win.