With our annual pilgrimage to East Horsley now in July, we were rewarded with a beautiful Summer's day and on winning the toss, the Mogs elected to bat on a slow, flat track. MWCC openers Peter "Yoda" Furner and Steve "R" Kelly struggled with some good early swing bowling and after 12 overs, the Mogs had creaked to 32-0. Only Lothar's constant supply of ice-cold lager kept the sledging from the boundary to a minimum and thankfully both batsmen started to persuade the ball off the square, before R Kelly, obviously still celebrating his recent No 1 in the Singles Chart, lost his middle stump to a Sally Gunnell (an effective if ugly runner). This brought Jamie "Roy Keane" Freeland to the crease and soon he was caressing the ball to all parts of Horsley's beautiful ground. Furner was next out (in the eyes of the oppostion at least) for a run-every-nineteen balls 57, and then again three balls later whereupon he left the pitch to a cheery farwell from the opposition skipper Simon "Lazers" Lazenby (whose running mid-pitch commentary mirrored his day job as Rugby presenter for Sky Sports).
This brought Stuart "Buckets" Jackson to the crease with his characteristic geezer's swagger. Stu was obviously distracted by thoughts of how much money R Kelly and he could make if they bought up all the sumptuous property surrounding the cricket ground and turned the pavilion into a nightclub, and he was out 2nd ball without troubling Humph. Chairman Mao-tin replaced the dejected property tycoon and in the next 45 minutes he and Jamie demolished East Horsley's attack. David hit a Flintoff-like 50 off 25 balls, whilst Jamie reached his 4th Mog hundred (uniting both Horsleys) off exactly 100 balls. The Mogs declared confidently on 248-3 and settled into an excellent tea.
East Horsley sent out their indomitable pairing of Philip (no relation of Bob Marley drummer Pete) Tosh and Mark (not David) Ward and soon they were scoring at 6 or 7 runs an over with Jimmy "Looking for a Rich Bird" Honeyfield (unable to find any sort of rhythm between the sheets or on the pitch), and Matthew "the Ginger Fury" Lewis both going for plenty.
At 70-0 desperate measures were called for and up stepped the Major to claim favourite Mog foe Tosh, stumped for a typically cavalier 58, mercifully before his usual trick of lofting 6's into the "adjoining garden of savage dogs". Horsley's luminously hatted no 3 kept the momentum going however with some ferocious straight driving and with 20 overs to go, Horsley required 141 with 8 wickets in hand. Freeland was bowling by this stage and showing remarkable restraint too, and his unusual smiles to the batsmen and general courtesy to the opposition obviously bamboozled Horsley's middle order as he took 2 wickets in an over. The Mogs were back in the match big time, or so we thought, until Horsley's 14 year old Drake started to smash everything all over the ground in a display of correct hitting reminiscent of the Mog's own yester-year child prodigy Alistair Brown. It did not help that MWCC keeper William "Colonel Cuzza" Parker was having an early bath by this stage after injuring his shoulder whilst impersonating Eric the Eel. Having 10 men to cover the short boundaries and lighting outfield was not ideal in these circumstances and at crucial moments throughout the innings the Mogs dropped continued to drip catches, 2 fearful sitters going down again as well as a couple of harder ones, the second of which bringing on a fearful torrent of abuse from Lothar who already had Pram Figures of 4 broken Fisher Price organs, 2 cracked Action Man jeeps and 3 lost Buzz Lightyears.
Horsley lost a couple more wickets towards the end, with Drake falling for an impressive 50 to a rock solid Action Jackson catch in the deep, but their very own Johnny Parker clone coming in at number 8 still had enough fire power to claim a magnificent victory in the last over of the match, finishing the match with a towering six over mid wicket off the now toyless Lewis M.
Hats off to them for successfully chasing such a daunting total and much was said about our respect and liking for this club with all of the Mogs staying for an hour after the game drinking the many jugs of beer that were on offer. Next year we bat second...
Author: Hewitt A
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