cool as

17 wickets, no-one understands cricket

It looked like a sweet deeply hard track, all ready for runs. Right. Sure. We're all out 145, Auburn 7/83 (scorecard). All to play for on day 2, even money and a fair lot of cricket to come.

It swung early, ok; the 4 Auburn seamers were spot on, sure, with us only failing to pick up the odd leg-side gimme as they knocked over the top and middle orders not with the standard wide waiting lines but with tough straight stump-to-stump bowling, Papanis outstanding with 6/33 off 17. But so where and what were the demons? From early the odd one zipped and bounced and shimmied, mostly harmless; there are wrist and thigh and chest bruises, but were there so few drives because of the miserly length or because it just didn't come on? Few of our wickets, as ever, fell to the wild zippy bouncing odd ones, which instead just held us up cautiously until we got ourselves out, till Captain Sensible, low at 9, gloriously smote 43 off 22 balls and our top order bewildered themselves as to why it wasn't so easy earlier.

Even still, none of us at heart thought 145 defensible, because we haven't been winning all that much and last year's premiership-winning 4th-grade side which defended 160s and 170s at key moments with ludicrous catching seems from this distance a mythical dream rather than the dirty practical collective joy it was at the time, yet our marvellous U-19 wibbly seamer Jason took 5 for nothing and never looked like not rolling them after his first magical c & b to whip out the dangerous opener. He has to come off after 8 overs, them's the rules for youngies, he'll be back with the still new ball next week, but the boys whipped round and snaffled two more leaving just Auburn's oldies - averaging 46 and 47 respectively from 8 and 9 in 3rd grade, it must be said - to worry through the week. Whew. What other days might've happened?