the skies were black. Imagine the deepest recesses of space when the aliens are in mourning and someone forgot to turn the stars on. Yup, prospects for a full days play looked about as promising an all nighter at silent prayer monastery. Amongst their many qualities cricketers must travel in hope because no matter how vicious the impending weather Armageddon a little kernel of hope dictates that somehow it will blow over, miss or somehow hold forth its fury until it hits the next village. Thus 11 cricketers of Kibworth headed to to perform the opposite of a rain dance, or at the very least keep Jack Lewis quiet. Regular readers will be aware that The Bard has limited success with the coin. Calling correctly for him is akin to picking the 6 lottery numbers so he took an unusual approach of taking Vice Captain Sideshow with him to call in the hope the luck would change. It didn't, Kibworth bowled and when they did it was a mixed bag. Jamie Thompson took two wickets with some decent wheels; ball, belly and man boobs swinging nicely in the breeze. Sideshow bowled ok too, the occasional beauty with a full toss pie thrown into the mix every so often. Steve Thompson reminded Bob that the skipper was at first slip should the team require filth to be sent down. With more bowling than batting the cherry was rotated at dizzying speed. Chris Carson took his first men's wicket (but strangely went missing at the bar afterwards), Ben Herring skidded through off about six paces on a greasy wicket with no spikes, Shiv Modi showed considerable courage to loop his leg breaks up against aggressive batting, Tommy Cooper continued his notable improvement and Steve Thompson exchanged the gloves for his variety of dibble dobble but still went for three boundaries in the penultimate over. And so we move onto Jack Lewis. In terms of verbal diahorrea per square inch Jack must surely run Richard Jackson close, which is a rare achievement for one of only 11 years of age. He is keen, loud and ready to badger anyone to get himself a place higher in the order or another over. Whilst we await the blossoming of his cricket potential a career in hard selling surely awaits. In Jack's only two previous games he has taken three and two wickets respectively but heading into this last over it looked liked his golden arm had at last failed him. One big hit down the ground has just eluded Jamie Thompson on the boundary and the odds didn't look good when the ball was lofted in the same direction but this time the corpulent nephew of the second team vice didn't disappoint and held a beauty going forward near the ground. To those still rubbing their eyes in disbelief at that it was swiftly followed up by The Bard throwing down the stumps from Mid Wicket to affect the mother of all unlikely run outs. Haddon closed on 174 off their 35 overs. 

 It was a sad fact that the magnificent tea laid on by the hosts would be markedly better than the batting to come but even that was likely to be curtailed by an impending monsoon. When the deluge finally arrived Kibworth were three down and about 130 short but the weather made it all rather unimportant unlike the lack of bitter at the bar which fairly frit Abbo back over the border into Leicestershire.

Will Jennings - 27/07/2009