Thanks to Matt for sending this on.

Chalky (16*) and Jon (8 minus 5) got The Cahillbillies off to a good start with a partnership of 28 at the half way stage. Jon exploited the lack of leg-side fielders with some flicks to fine leg, forcing a fielding change that Chalky exploited with some expansive shots into the offside.

Captain Si (9 minus 5) and new recruit Bob (14*) were next in and took the total to 60, which after deducting 10 runs for the two wickets, set the Old Mothers a target of 51. The total may have been more but for Chris bowling an economical second over and Steve’s economy effectively 0, as the 10 runs he leaked were made up for with two good wickets and he was perhaps unlucky not to add to that with an lbw against Si questionably turned down. Perhaps the wind, rain and reduced visibility made the umpire’s job even more difficult.

The run chase began and took a turn for the worse when, with the first ball of the second over, Chalky took a wicket from Nick, to leave the Old Mothers on a score of -1. Just as the batting team began to recover, thanks to some good shots from man of the match Steve (14*), Si took another wicket from Nick (8 minus 10) to set a target of 37 runs from the final 5 overs.

Chris and Kev took a positive approach, with Chris hitting a Jon leg-break for 5, with no boundaries to speak of Chris and Kev were forced to run for them. Jon made up for it with a good ball that just clipped off stump enough to remove the bail and take a, rather soft, wicket from Kev (9 minus 5). Rich, playing well behind the stumps, ran out Chris (15 minus 5) in the final over after he told Kev to ‘run whatever happens’.

The 4 Old Mother wickets proved critical as they ended exactly 20 runs short of the target with a final score of 31. Despite the rain, the game provided good practice and, perhaps more importantly, a good afternoon’s entertainment. There are several ‘Cavalier Sevens’ games scheduled and hopefully the weather will be more suitable for the occasion. There were some promising moments, with bowlers getting the ball in the right areas with surprising consistency considering the break and some positive batting from the likes of Steve, Chalky, Chris and Bob.

We are looking forward to the season opener against CLS next Sunday.

Jon.

Yuvraj Singh is my hero.

He was man of the tournament in last years World Cup, hitting the winning runs in the final to, in his words, ‘win it for Sachin’. Injury and loss of form saw him in and out of the India side through the summer, before he was diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer.

For the last three months he has been undergoing chemotherapy, taking strength and inspiration from Lance Armstrong. He has now returned to India and is hoping to be playing cricket again in a few months.

Not everyone who suffers from such illnesses recover. I’m sure we all know people that haven’t and it is a sad thing to witness. One of the real wonders of modern science is the miracle that takes place every time someone does recover, every time someone manages to do something they feared they might never do again.

I’m hoping that during England’s tour of India Yuvraj Singh will take to the field, to rapturous applause from both the home support and the barmy army. I’m sure not even the most ardent England fan would begrudge him a good performance.

Because it’s not really about Yuvraj. It’s not really about cricket. It’s about everyone who has ever done something they never thought they’d do again and all the people that don’t get to. It’s about the personal heroes we all have.

Not only did I drop two of the most routine catches ever (I would like to think that I would have taken them on grass with a leather ball – but there are no guarantees), I also rather struggled to bowl. I like to think I’ve improved both with the bat and with the ball through nets, but judging by that performance, that is not the case. It was bad enough for me to win the ‘villain of the match’ award and in the spirit of the event I would like to consider this my acceptance speech.

There were one or two bad performances out there today, but I consider myself thoroughly deserving of this award. Although I struggled to bowl on target, once I got it right I came close to taking a couple of wickets, as I generally do, but it took far long and the bad balls were really bad. The dropped catches hurt and I felt I could have been better with the bat. An all round bad performance. Thank you for the award, thanks to Rich for organising today and well done to Chris Bob for his well deserved man of the match award.

I hope to make some improvements and not get any more of these awards this season.

Cricket is a beautiful game and the Cavaliers always seek to play it in the correct spirit, attempting to achieve victory in a gentlemanly and sporting fashion.

It appears, however, that suspicion has arisen over the number of wide deliveries, expensive overs and dropped catches that occur whilst the Cavaliers are fielding, as well as the nature of some of the dismissals of certain batsmen. The truth is that there is no need for suspicions of illegal activity, corruption and fixing, we are in fact genuinely that bad.

The Cavaliers pride themselves on trying, we enjoy cricket and believe that the semi-competitive sport we play is best served when teams are trying to achieve. That said the alcohol consumed before matches, at tea and during play probably doesn’t help matters, but it is rather fun and ‘fun’ and ‘trying’ is exactly what us Cavaliers are about.

Jon.

The game was Barton against Torquay, a second XI fixture between the Bay’s two greatest local rivals. I was a new umpire, without even a friendly game under my belt, too nervous to even be able to do up my Primary Club tie properly in the umpire’s changing room before the game. My club, Barton, batted first, and although there was a tense atmosphere most of their innings went without me having to do very much. As ever at Barton, there was a wonderful tea, and I felt incredibly relaxed as we went out for Torquay’s innings.

Now, of course, everything on the pitch was turned up a notch, and as the new umpire everything seemed to come to my end. There had already been a couple of contentious wides – yes, it was that sort of game – when inevitably the first lbw decision came to me, and I can still see it now.

The ball pitched outside the off stump and came back in, hitting the batsman outside the line – but he had shouldered arms, so that didn’t matter very much. And to me the ball was going on to hit the stumps. I’m sure everyone taking their first stint as umpire sees a decision like that unfold, gives it consideration as they are instructed to, and then gives it out. I can’t see how you wouldn’t. You need one to settle your nerves. So I gave him out.

However, in the next over from my end I got the really contentious one. It was a bad decision. It pitched outside the left-hander’s off stump by a margin and flicked his pad on its way through to the keeper. I thought it flicked his bat, so I gave him out caught behind. It was such a bad decision that the poor batsman’s dismissal was recorded as lbw, and everything that hit the pads from then on was greeted with an exuberant appeal from the Barton fielders, who clearly felt that they had an umpire who had no idea what he was doing. I umpired a friendly game a couple of weeks later and when I actually heard the sound of an edge for the first time, I realised what a mistake I’d made.

From then on, though, I couldn’t win. I gave two more lbw decisions which left Torquay at about 20-4. The last two got clearer and clearer, with the final one hitting the batsman on the toe of the back foot in front of middle stump, but by then my authority had gone. The away side were furious and, although I shook hands with their skipper and pleaded my honesty, matters weren’t helped when Barton’s skipper came over mid-handshake with a pint and a tenner for me as a thanks for officiating the game.

The reason I relay this long and tedious story is that my friend and team-mate Jon posted a few days ago about the DRS system and, in his usual dry and witty way, put forward why he disagrees with it. And at our level, I do absolutely agree with Jon. If any of our players where to openly disagree with the umpire’s decision they wouldn’t play for us again, and if any of our players nick or glove the club rules are that they walk. We play for fun and for sportsmanship first, and we don’t tolerate anything that might be against the spirit of the game. Ultimately, if I am given out to a bad decision after a low score, it might ruin my Sunday. If a cricketer at a higher level gets a bad decision, it might affect not only his week, but his entire career.

There are plenty of examples I’m sure, but the one that springs to mind the most is Andrew Strauss in Napier in 2008. He was about to lose his place in the Test side altogether at a time when batsmen were queuing up to join Vaughan’s successful team, and after a duck in the first innings hit a wonderful 177 to win the game. A dodgy lbw decision early on in that innings and the course of not just his career, but England’s future progression would have been very different. The higher you go in the game, the higher the stakes, and the greater the inclination to let the umpire decide rather than walking or declaring a catch grounded.

In any case, the idea that ‘batsmen should walk’ is something of a class construct. In the days when professionals bowled and gentlemen batted, it served the club ‘amateurs’ well to spread the myth that they would pretty much give themselves out if they felt it was justified. Grace himself, by all accounts, never walked; I love the story that is told of when he was clean bowled but calmly replaced the bails back on top of the stumps, pointing to the crowd and announcing ‘they have come to watch me bat, not to watch you bowl’.

I think DRS is a great idea. The intention is get rid of the ‘howler’ (the caught behind that was so far from the bat that everyone thought it was an lbw, for example), and I think it does that. I particularly like the fact that any marginal decisions stay with the on-field umpire, and if sides are only allowed one review per innings that takes out any spurious appeals ‘just in case’ the bowler’s foot was a millimetre over or whatever. And I think that it doesn’t just remove any doubt about the marginal decisions – it pretty much proves that the umpires are right most of the time.

I don’t think DRS would suit the Cavaliers, though. For a start we wouldn’t arrive in time to set up all the cameras, and our guy monitoring the screen would be Matt who would probably still be asleep when the innings started. When fielding, we’d use our one review in the first over and spend the rest of the game bleating about how that one ‘would have definitely been out if we had DRS’. And when batting, I’d use our one review to question Kev’s dodgy lbw decision and find he was right after all.

Actually, it’s a rubbish idea.

Post your captions below, and whichever one makes Freddie gurgle the most wins a Cavaliers cap!

‘The system works so well at international level, having no tactical impact on the game whatsoever, but ensuring that questionable decisions can be referred on, bringing a greater level of fairness to the game.’

He then hopped onto the back of a pig and flew away.

This system is far from perfect as it does not take into account quantum mechanics and the possibility of divine intervention. The ball might suddenly inexplicably swerve off course, pass through the stumps, explode or disappear entirely, just because it hasn’t happened in the recorded history of the game does not mean it cannot happen.

On the flip side, I am told that the hawk eye system is based on the same system that the American military use to track their missiles to ensure they don’t miss their targets and as we all know, American missiles never miss!

In village and social cricket it is traditional for members of the batting side to take shifts in umpiring while they are not batting, this means the style of umpiring varies greatly throughout a match. Here at the Cavaliers we have our own, highly innovative, version of the DRS, that perhaps the big boys of cricket might find of use.

In the event of an lbw appeal, the umpire makes a decision over whether he thinks the batsman is out, if he is fairly certain (beyond a reasonable doubt) that the batsman is out, he will raise his finger, if he is sure the batsman is not out or is uncertain he will shake his head. Everyone else shuts up, accepts this and carries on playing.

In the event of a catch where it is unsure if the ball grounded or if the fielder crossed the boundary before the catch was taken, the fielder is required to be honest and sporting about this. The same is true of the batsman if he gets an edge to the ball and is caught behind, he is expected to walk if this is the case.

It is hoped that good sportsmanship at the lower levels of the game will be embraced by the children who watch village cricket and go on to play international cricket and this way of playing will work it’s way up the tiers of the game, until we reach a place where all international cricketers are able to accept the umpires decision and allow the game to continue it’s flow in the knowledge that these decisions probably balance themselves out over the course of time.

I’ve just got back from Babbacombe, and it looks like someone has been at the astroturf pitch with a Stanley knife:

Sadly it doesn’t just look like deliberate damage to me, as if that in itself weren’t bad enough. The cuts are on a length at both ends, and I think whoever did it was aware that these are the key parts of the pitch.

There is another large cut section on one of the bowler’s run-ups, so the damage is quite significant. Here’s hoping Babbacombe can get it fixed, but it’s going to be a difficult and expensive job and I’m not at all certain that repairing it will be viable. And let’s hope the culprits get their comeuppance.

The US presidential elections will throw up a surprise, with a gun crazed, conservative, evangelical Christian – who believes the world was created in 1954 to coincide with the rise of Elvis Presley – elected to the position of the second most powerful figure on Earth (after Verinder Sehwag). California will leave the Union in embarrassment.

England will win their first Test series in the sub-continent (with the exception of Bangladesh) since 2001. Perhaps not.

The opening ceremony of the Olympic Games will be a huge cringe-fest, featuring dance troupe ‘Diversity’ dancing on top of red double-decker buses. The small annoying one will accidentally be thrown off to be run over by a Mini display team, to huge cheers from the crowd.

Another cricketer will be arrested for spot-fixing, to which former Australia captain Ricky Ponting will announce, ‘I can’t understand why anyone would cheat in order to lose, we only cheat in order to win.’ He is dropped shortly after this.

England will have a good summer in Test matches, but a woeful one in one days, the same old people will talk about the same old problem of too much cricket being scheduled.

The Cavendish Cavaliers will have a record-breaking season, drink lots of beer and have lots of fun.

California will declare allegiance the Chinese government, increasing tensions between the US and China. Everyone will start to panic about an imminent war, but then, in December the world ends, so none of it really matters.

Best off just having a really good final year alive aren’t we?

Happy (slightly old now) New Year!

JM