Broadberry Sports

Scotland & England were both out of the 20/20 Cricket World Cup (England having lost an hour or so before we headed north of COP26 to take on SSRC tonight.

Have you ever actually played a match in the correct ‘Manfred Man’ order i.e. No.5, 4, 3, 2, 1? Me either, but that’s what happened tonight, at a packed Maryhill club, with other matches including our 5th team, making it a great atmosphere.

Ready, steady, go! On at No.5 was the Mighty Millen – or Ollie as he’s better-known v Jesse Mills. Normally I’d say that Jesse is quite capable of beating himself, but something had changed! Ollie battled well and even had his chances to get involved in a tough battle, to see where that took him. However, tonight Jesse was all over the court and kept Ollie quiet with his great retrieving and decent length. Ollie wasn’t able to keep the ball’s width tight enough and Jesse countered with a good short game to punish anything loose. Watch out ‘West Squash’, ‘he looks good, he looks fine’ (well his squash does!). 3-1 win to Jesse.

Next on was Hamish (Buchanan) against Brian ‘Robbo’ Robertson. Brian was impressive against Hamish and his dying length to both back corners was excellent. Hamish displayed his normal frequent tins, but I thought he could have kept Brian on court longer and examined his fitness much more, especially as Robbo was giving him about 40-odd years! Unfortunately, this wasn’t to be and Brian ran away with a 3-0 win (I wonder how good I’ll be when I’m as old as Brian? Well I’ve got 20 or so years to find out!!?!?!?!).

The No.3s were on next, as Cammy (Colquhoun) took on Joe Ewan. Joe won the 1st game easily (11-1 or so) and so I went to warm up for my match against Dan Wearing thinking this would be a very short match!

I was chatting to several people, during my warmup and someone asked:

‘How do you think you’ll do against Dan tonight?,’ but before I could answer, SSRC’s Scotty Mowat said:

‘You’ll get pumped!’ I had to concede that he was probably right. However, having thought about it much more, I realise that coming from Scott, it was probably more the old adage that ‘Even a stopped clock is right twice a day!’

When I came back to Cammy’s match, he was playing with a new racket and was 2-1 up! Where did he come from, where did Joe go? I’m not sure the new Harrow Vapor can take the credit, but Cammy was a different player. He’d pinned Joe to the back and stopped him taking control of the ‘T’. Now the attritional war was being won by Cammy and on top of this, his backhand volley drops and hard/quick length were impressive and forcing errors from Joe. 3-1 to Cammy.

Dan and I were on next and the match went much the way both I (and Scotty M) thought it would. Dan was too good from the start, taking the first easily. I did much better in the second game, by taking my ‘between game’ advice from Ollie – and getting the ball behind Dan much more. However, it only delayed the inevitable, as I lost the match 3-0.

Later on, Scotty Mowat told me that I’d get two veggie pies tonight for dinner, but he was wrong, so he must have got something else right earlier on in the day to confirm the ‘Stopped Clock’ saying – which seems very unlikely! (or maybe Scott works off a clock that doesn’t have an a.m. because he’s ‘anti 24 hours’ or something equally bizarre, knowing Scotty!).

Last on were the No.1s as Chris (Murphy) took on Ali Prott, who must be pushing the top 5 in Scotland – this would be some workout for Chris! Unfortunately, Ali was all over this match and even when Chris did get on the ‘T’ another well honed shot came back at him, putting him immediately under pressure again. There was a point in the second game where there was a glimmer of hope at 6-5, but Ali soon shut that door and went on to win the match 3-0.

Mushroom pie, beans & chips for dinner (Scotch pie for the ‘normals’) and cake to finish. With quite a few tins of Tennent’s in him, Ollie was on good form, but when I told him earlier to get the ‘T’ as much as possible tonight, it wasn’t exactly what I meant!