Chaos here,

Well the big one finally came round, despite Swaine’s 2 losses already this season, this is still the team to beat for us. Relying on the other pony teams in this league to beat these is futile, if we’re hunting a league title we have to come here and do the business ourselves. The next few paragraphs will outline how we took matters into our own hands in an emphatic way. We came in to the game after a bit of a nightmare week. Judas Iscariot, aka LC has decided to go back to Woodlands and do as he’s told like a good boy. Chavez was missing, attending some randomers wedding and Rudgey got injured Friday fighting a schoolchild at break time. That gave Brad Lay, Logan Silverwood (MVP) and Braiden Fortis (Bozo) an opportunity to sample a big game with high importance.

Yet again, I won the toss and decided to follow the blueprint to beat Swaine by batting first and getting them behind the 8-ball. Unfortunately we lost M1 early caught behind which brought the life-size thorn in Swaines side, JR to the crease. Shoki was looking in good touch finding the boundary with powerful strokes until he skied one leaving us 42-2. A slight rebuild was needed from JR and Mogs, they duly delivered and went about a good partnership. The pair put on 68 runs before JR was given out lbw when he took the case of it, Siraj was bowled shortly after leaving a straight one. Mogs brought up a classy half century in just 51 balls and was looking set to get a big score. A change in bowling and a ball that slightly stopped in the wicket saw the end of him, caught and bowled on 59. At 138-5 we were on the precipice, it would require some guts and match management to get us up to a competitive total against a side filled with class batters.

It was at this point the pitch began to change and got a lot harder to face medium pace, the ball moving off the seam. Brad Lay came in and counterattacked superbly, playing some powerful strokes and taking the game back to Swaine. A few of their bowlers didn’t like Slay’s style and got into verbals with him but it was a bad idea as the ball was only going further. Eventually he fell to a great catch at deep-wicket for an excellent 29 which injected some momentum into the innings. At 180-7 I asked Logan what he felt a good score would be and he replied 240 would be plenty against these. The 200 was brought up in 44.4 overs and we decided to throw caution to the wind and up the tempo. A couple of lusty blows and inventive strokes from both batters got us up to a very competitive 259-7, Chaos finishing on 71* (78) and MVP 16* (33).

At half time the dressing room was happy with the score, we showed some guts and played some good cricket to give ourselves something to defend. With the omission of the injured Rudgey, the natural selection to replace him with the new ball was Shoki, who has previously bowled well against the same opposition. The decision would be quickly vindicated, Shoki nicked off the top 3 batters with all 3 being caught by Nads in 2nd slip. It’s no secret we go into super-aggressive mode in the field against these, which is something they don’t cope well with. At 37-3 we smelt blood and were in no mood to let the old enemy off the hook. There was a 40 run partnership for the 4th wicket, mainly thanks to some dubious lbw decisions. Eventually Nads joined the party and got the big wicket of Lilley, trapped in front for 33. M1, not wanting to miss out on scalps, then got his bunny Chris Holliday out lbw AGAIN, a familiar sight when the two face-off. M1 then clean bowled another one of Swaine’s local players who’s signed from Scarborough. Swaine batting order was in complete disarray. They slipped from 82-3 to 97-8, the fight ripped out of them by our seam attack who bowled magnificently together. Nadim brought the curtain down on the day with a caught and bowled leaving him with impressive figures of 3/31. Shoki and M1 got the innings off and running, the way they bowled early on set the tone and made Swaine’s task even harder. Shoki earning 3/33 and M1 with excellent figures of 4/40 from the short boundary.

In my 6th season at the club I’ve had my fair share of success against Swaine but today we stamped our 2023 authority all over them. We looked every bit a team at the top of the league and put a faultless performance together with 3 first team players missing. I must pay homage to Brad and Logan who both came in against the toughest opposition we play, and showed real guts and bravery when batting. Without those two we don’t get up to the score we did and the game is very different. The three seamer’s won the day for us and never allowed them a foothold in the game, to win by 153 runs is a hammering at any level.

Tomorrow we return to the same dump of a ground to do it all again in our defence of the Sykes Cup trophy. Hopefully I’ll see you all there to support the boys and put another nail in the Swaine coffin.

Til next time,

It’s been Chaos