31 July 2011

Those cricket fans amongst my readers must be wondering why I have not yet mentioned the second test match between England and India currently taking place at Trent Bridge. Nottingham. It is not that I have lost interest, or indeed not been following the match myself, but have refrained from too much discussion about the game merely in deference to those readers who find too much detail about cricket is incomprehensible. On this occasion therefore I start at the end of the third day.

I missed the toss but assume England won it and decided to bat. As it turned out they had a disastrous start and were 112 for 7 at one stage until they were rescued by Broad who knocked up 64 runs himself in partnership with the rest of the tail and managed to drag England to a respectable 221 all out.

This looked even more respectable when Makund was out for a duck from the first ball. Then however India settled down grinding away at England’s score and surpassing it with the loss of only 4 wickets. The game was suddenly running away from England when Tendulkar, fortunately, for England, failed yet again and was out to Anderson for 16, after which there was a monumental collapse with Broad achieving every bowler’s dream in a test match, taking a hat-trick (three successive wickets in three balls in the same over) in all he took six wickets. This plus his contribution to the batting certainly puts him in a strong position for ‘man of the match’ The star of the Indian side was Dravid (117) who was running away with the match until Broad got amongst them and the wickets began to tumble. India were 267 for 5 and all out for 288, a lead of 62. It could have been far worse from England’s point of view who finished the second day, at the start of their second innings at 24 or 1 having lost Cook for 5.

England batted all of the third day, piling on the runs, until an incident at tea, caused quite a stir and a lot of controversy. What happened was this. On the last ball before tea, Bell, who was then on 137, hit what he believed was a 4. Kumar, the fielder, dived in an attempt to stop the more striking the boundary and had no idea whether it can actually touched the boundary rope or not. Bell, believing the umpires had called ‘over’ started walking in with the rest of the players for tea.. He was then stumped (in effect run out) for being out of his ground, as it was subsequently determined that the ball was not dead as there was no proof that the ball had actually hit the boundary. According to the strict letter of the law the umpires were quite correct in giving him out but as a result of a plea from the English captain during tea, the Indian captain, withdrew their appeal and Bell was reinstated and went on to score 159. It was undoubtedly England’s day as they ended it with 441 for 6, 374 ahead giving the Indian team an almost impossible target, that is assuming England declare overnight

I went out into the garden in my neck wheelchair for a couple of hours in the afternoon, sitting shirtless, trying to build up my vitamin D, for the winter to come.

I should mention yesterday that Derek, our faithful, friendly plumber sacrificed a good part of his precious Saturday to come round and sort out our drains and immersion heater. Like me, Derek is passionate about cricket, and he popped in to have a friendly chat with me. We are so lucky with people who. Like Derek, look after us. We have been here so long they have become more like friends than tradesmen.

To finish on a light note here is a short love story