“If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine”
During the off-season, our resident antipodean James ‘Moany’ Mahony has evidently done a stand-up job in rebooting the King’s Road website. Bright orange colours, self-scrolling media content, and an unacceptable yet grimly predictable plague of Cam Green content.
But how else can the Road adapt and advance in this ever-evolving technological age? Can it master cloning and create a cricketing army of Mandys? Can it work with Sherman to craft the most powerful willow known to humankind? Or can it build a time machine so that Twyman is actually on time for a match?
For too long now, we have been living in the dark ages of match reports, hibernating in our bear’s den of antiquity, manual labour and porn advert-filled websites. But no more. King’s Road has walked into the light, and embraced the undoubted power of Moantifical Intelligence.
When asked “What makes a good report about a cricket match?”, ChatGPT provides 9 main tips (some of which I shall combine, as they overlap quite a bit; no slime-powered machine-learning model is perfect I guess…)
Start with a catchy headline: Unclear whether this is an intentional cricket-related pun early doors, but MoanI has written the report title for me. Nice one.
Set the scene: Intraclub is an annual tradition at KRCSC (although the last match report for it on the new website appears to be from 2018 – sort it out Moans), pitching Roader against Roader in a pre-season warm-up contest after a winter of anticipation-building indoor nets. This year’s intrepid individuals were led by Woody and Sham, described by one committee member with access to the club Twitter account as “the most selfless man we know” versus “the most selfish man we know”. When it came to draft-time, Sham won the toss, but decided to give Woody first pick, either trying to rescue his reputation or steal his preferred picks for himself (I’ll let you be the judge). Either way, the sides ended up as follows (with McGilligan as a floater):
Team Sham: Birch, Sherman, Pinkney, Andrews, Sainthouse, Shermer, Twyman, Brown, Venkatesh, Keating, Hughes
Team Woody: PEJ, Craigie, Moorjani, Newlove, Bibby, Fair, Brahme, Tyzack, Mahony, Rossi, Joshi
Describe the action / analyse the game / provide context / use engaging language: Despite a very clear meet time of 12:20pm, there was still no sign of Captain Sham 15 minutes before play, so with VVC Pinkney losing the toss in Sham’s absence, Woody took the simple choice of bowling first on a rain-dampened Battersea Park 1 wicket.
Dave Hughes – lord of all he surveys
The bowlers made first in-roads in the fifth over, with Pinkney nobly walking after gloving through to Craigie behind the stumps off Bibby. One post-match revelation was that Bibby was coined ‘Oscar Wilde’ by his old team for being, in his words, “an earnest and verbose little shit”. Luckily for us, someone along the way convinced him of the importance of being earnest… [bows for applause]
I can resist everything except temptation (and shattering stumps)
It could be said “once a captain, always a captain”, and Keats pulled a classic show of gamesmanship out of his locker by “BrEaKiNg ThE sCoRiNg ApP” post the opening dismissal, resulting in a ~10 minute delay to take the wind out of the good ship Bibbs. Once (batting) order had been restored, Team Sham proceeded to deliver 3 retirees in the forms of Sherman, Birch and Mandrews. The ever-enigmatic Twyman similarly achieved a ‘25 and retired’ with some trademark heavy-hitting, whilst also achieving the day’s Champagne Moment along the way, hitting a 6 over a tree at long-on (having been challenged to do just this moments before by Chief Sledging Officer PEJ). Roll VT:
Further double-digit contributions from Shermer, Captain Sham, Sainty and Nikhil took Team Sham to a very respectable (and laws of cricket-breaking) 233 for 11; highlights from Team Woody’s bowling included Niall (4-0-4-18), Bibbs (3-1-11-1) and Ali (4-0-15-0). The innings break brought the return of the Road’s true star performer: TEAS. Cue one of the finest spreads Battersea Park Pavilion has seen in a long time:
Not a slime in sight
After filling up on a belt-busting array of wraps, flatbreads, tarts, baguettes, cake, cupcakes and fruit salad (never change Road), it was time for Team Woody’s batters to put down the literal plate, and step up to the figurative one. Despite losing Craigie to a pea-roller of a delivery from Sainty (resulting in 2023’s first ‘dismissal apology’ – 👏👏👏 classy touch 👏👏👏), Team Woody matched Team Sham’s three top-order retirees in PEJ, Chinmay, and Niall who, unsatisfied with punishing the bowlers, decided to engage in some team self-sabotage by running Bibby out at the non-striker’s end without facing a delivery. Other double-figure scorers included Dougie, Oscar, Krishnal (who, as son of Shailesh Joshi, became the Road’s 2nd father-son combo after Smally and Rossi) and Bibby who, in another laws of cricket-breaking move, was given a second chance at (after)life.
As batters and retirees came and went, the final over pitched old friends PEJ and Browny against each other in a battle of intraclub supremacy. But as anyone who has watched 2023’s Cocaine Bear will attest, unfortunately bears can climb trees:
Team Sham came out on top of a tightly-contested and finely-matched contest with a 3 run victory, pick of the bowlers being Mandy (4-0-18-2) and Shermer (4-1-19-3).
The finest scoreboard that £209.99 can buy at Sports Direct
Be objective: Nice try MoanI. Joke of a result; Sham absolutely stole this one.
Use multimedia / include quotes: A huge thanks to all who attended and participated, with a special mention going to Chief Technology Officer Craigie who, in a bigger shock than last year’s massive chicken skewers, treated The Road to what may be a global first: village-level Hawkeye technology. This joyous innovation provided this report writer with perhaps the perfect summary of what Intraclub can, and should, be, with final words going to Tom Birch:
Until next time!
Award Winners
Embarrassing: Moany watching the ball go for 6 (with accompanying attempted kick and squeal) (editors note, this award is BS)
Champagne: Twyman 6 over the tree (after PEJ challenge)
Teas: Chinmay lamb keema flatbreads
POTM: Niall (50, 4-18, 1 c&b)