Toss Win: Chewbacca who elected to bowl

Weather conditions: Overcast with high humanity and a moderate breeze

Start time: 2pm sharp.

It was at this time the opening pair of Brown and Moany commenced the game. Browny bowled exceptionally for a spell of four overs, four maidens for 1 wicket. His wicket was the critical one of opener Wayne Crew, a stump rattler that removed a player who last year caused headaches for the Road., 

At the other end, suffering post tour indigestion, was Moany, who bowled the number 3 with another stump ratter to have Alba reeling at 2-5.  

After 4 exceptional overs Browny was dragged for breaching his daily carbon emissions quota. Moany was also dragged on the back of exceeding his weekly slime quota, but the two early wickets had the Road in a good position.

Enter Morne Markel Isham fresh from his summer in Joburg. After learning that batsmen would leave good balls on a length in South Africa, Markel probed with a fuller length and opened his first over with two wibbly wobbler wickets. Alba now 4-8. Lekker Lekker. 

Not satisfied with 2 wickets, Isham proceeded to dismantle Alba with not 1 more, nor 2 more, but 3 more wickets. A bag of 5 for our resident Kolpak player. A truly exceptional effort from Morne, who returned figures of 5-11 off 8 overs, including 2 maidens. Tell your kids about this day.  

At the other end, with more slime and length, was PEJ, the reborn Road all rounder (scrapper). Conquering his yips of yesteryear PEJ bowled a tidy spell of 1-12 off 6 overs, claiming the wicket of Alba’s only batter to score double figures.  Powerplay player Michael Rossi, fresh from his scooter accident, came on to bowl two overs before Chewbacca roared for the ball to be placed in his hand. 

Alba’s tactic from this point was to block out to try force a rained out draw. But they had not understood the concept of “let the wookie win”. Enter Keith Chewbacca Keating, who reminded the batters that he has completed the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs, with a tight 5 over spell and two wickets to grind through the lower order.

Monty came on at the other end and despite clearly having his first road wicket LBW was denied by the rather harsh umpires who were going for every extra they could (extras being their top scorer of the day).

The fun had only just began though. Lax took over and was there to assert there was a new left hand speed king in town. Two overs from the lax-man had Alba on the back foot

Fresh from the showing his limp wrist-bullet arm off, Woods closed out the innings, achieving some good turn on the slow Alba deck. Alba of course decided to block the last over rather than trying to score runs. 

Chasing a score of 90, Smalls and Peter Treego strolled to the crease. Of course, when asking for a ball clicker, the umpires were given prehistoric rocks from Alba, another underhanded sucker punch. 

Smalls was a man with a plan and saw off any low slingers from Brian whilst PEJ saw off Isham’s South African mate at the other end by leaving anything on a length.

PEJ struck some lovely offside shots including several cover drives. Smalls meanwhile was responsibly blocking with his very clear call of“No” causing PEJ to become overexcited, uproot himself and collapse to the ground. Smalls shook his head in disgust and carried on accumulating on his way to 33 off 65 balls.

Smalls finally succumbed to the fact the he hadn’t slept for 2 days, hauling out Woody to the crease to close out the day with a quick red inker. PEJ was left stranded 56 runs short of his first Road ton on 44 off 48 balls. 

A day to remember with Mark Isham safely securing his next Kolpak contract with the Road. Lax gave Rossi a lift home and we haven’t heard from either since, we suspect a brewing bromance has developed.