Hopes were high as the eleven Willowers gathered to take on their perennial rivals, the Flaxton Wanderers.

Yours truly was made captain, just to ensure that he arrived at the game, having extracted himself out of Parish matters.

Having won the toss, we decided to follow the lead of our international side and bat first. We massed 182 runs for the loss of only 4 wickets; however, we were probably 30 or 40 runs short of the target we needed to defend. Great contributions were made by Jonathan Davidson (34), Graeme Inglis (45), Murray Evans (31) with the skipper making 30.

Later on, it was one-way traffic as the Flaxton Wanderers smashed our bowlers to all corners of the paddock, until, of course, our irrepressible Joe Bennett, from behind the stumps, started weaving his magic by whispering all sorts of threats in the batsmen’s ears. The batsmen obliged and lifted their back foot only to be stumped superbly by Joe. From 4 for 146, Flaxton collapsed to be 8 for 166.

We sensed victory. Graeme Inglis was in sparkling form, taking 4 for 36, but all was in vain, as John Masefield anchored their innings, being not out 58 at the close. It was a narrow loss, with the winning runs being hit on the second ball of the 50th over.

However, closeness and narrowness of losses rings on deaf ears when it comes to the reaction of our selectors, who have made application to the Archbishop of Canterbury that the skipper of the day be banished to the Diocese of Siberia for the ensuing 12 months and not be reappointed Captain for next year’s fixture!