By Chris Pitcher. Saturday, 17th September, 2016, somewhere near Stratford, London.
There's something to be said for writing a match report nearly six months after the game has been played: one has a greatly increased pool of anecdotes to weave into the narrative of the game. So, for example, we can muse on the possibility that if Craig had not scampered a bye off the last ball of the Village innings, would we have voted to stay in the EU? If we knew that Theresa May was going to become Prime Minster rather than, say, Boris Johnson, would we even have bothered getting the central line all the way out to Essex? And if instead we just missed the tube, would we leave cricket for John Hannah, get mugged and get our hair cut and dyed so that it's clear through which alternative universe each plot line inhabits? Hindsight is 20:20 but after a summer of success under the renewed leadership of Eoin Morgan, who's to say it's not 50 overs now too?
So many unanswered questions. What many people suggest to be true is that on a sunny day in may Toby "Tobes" de Mellow was at the helm and that "The Village won the toss and elected to bat" against London Nigerians somewhere near Buckhurst Hill. London Nigeria is best known by our cousins across the pond as being the birthplace of Barack Obama, but this could just be a rumour started by the #morgs2017 presidential campaign, for it was he that opened the batting with a well-known extractor of rabbits from headwear for the benefit of children at parties. Some things then happened, including some handy runs and a run out involving villagers who have not been seen since, though none of this is ever reported by our inherently biased mainstream media. The vice-skipper-cum-actual-skipper scored an important 50 not out.
The match was then paused ostensibly to consider the risks posed by involving the Chinese in such a project, but it would then resume later despite nothing having materially changed. During this hiatus the oppo provided an absolutely fantastic lunch of chicken and rice before the whole concept was controversially sold to Channel 4 apparently for profit, which is something that someone at the DCMS really should look into if the can tear themselves away from the Mercury Music Prize party.
We then bowled whilst they batted. They decided that the ball should be sent home like Joey Barton, and we decided that we would all catch like Chris Pitcher circa 2015 (though many observers note that his tendency to talk about himself in the third person is due to him suggesting that maybe those second amendment guys could do something about the oppo). Some chap scored 72 which could be better spent on the NHS. In the end it was all incredibly close, even though the oppo required somewhere in the region of 18 off the last over as they briefly morphed into the London West Indians, unleashing an unexpected blitzkrieg of six hitting that in the final reckoning left them only one run short of the village total. IT WAS THE LOUSE WOT WON IT.
Village decamped to a local boozer to enter into negotiations with the landlord over a possible sponsorship deal that came to nothing and we all caught the night tube home. Oh look it’s the statue of liberty in the sand! How clever!!
