League Match 11: Aliens vs Mask Cricket Club
Michael Jordan was credited with the quote, ”There's no I in Team”…what Michael failed to realise however is that there are five in “Individual brilliance”. So this match report will (semi accurately) reflect this is as such.
On a steaming hot Norwegian afternoon, a sentence I never foresaw myself saying when I moved here in the darkness of November, Aliens were told to don the blue caps and attempt to restrict their opponents from Mortensrud to a chaseable total. On a small outfield that looked quicker than an Irish second innings it was felt that anything below six an over would be a great effort…in all honesty a par score would probably be around 250. It was a ”find a gap, score a boundary” sort of a day.
At 48-0 from 4 and a bit overs that par score was ominously creeping towards 280 until Crawf bowled a ball that would have possibly clipped 5th stump and was given out LBW. The batsman quite rightly stood staring in disbelief at the decision for around 14 minutes before reluctantly accepting his fate. Personally I would have liked to have seen more passion from the victim of such an outrageous decision, possibly even the Shahabaz style complete and unnecessary destruction of the stumps, however he settled for a few words, a lip wobble and he took his bat home for just 31 runs, a bat incidentally that had the widest middle in the whole of Norway and apparently the first in the history of the game to not possess an edge!
At this stage Shahabaz kindly informed the opposition that this was in fact a 4 day Test Match and the T20 start quickly turned into a block fest. With hopes of 280 melting faster than an ice cream in Karachi, David was brought into the attack and, showing the batsman what he possessed in his armoury, the eyes of the MASK player lit up!! For his second ball David offered up a Haggis Pie of a delivery which the hungry batter couldn ́t resist. The ball hit the stumps and although the bails wobbled momentarily, they eventually fell to the ground handing the Scotsman his first wicket of the day.
On came Harry to serve up a feast for the onlooking Aliens fielders as he went through his repertoire. With an elaborate flick of the wrist that was picked by everyone including Marcus at long-off, everyone except the guy with the bat that was, another wicket went down. With David chipping in with another one through the gate it was time for Captain Dennis to turn to experience…
Navid Khursheed could smell blood. Then again Navid is 116 years old so it could be that he had soiled himself again but either way, the script was about to be written for a spell that cricket fans from Abildsø to Kværnerbyen would be talking about for a long time to come. Virat Kohli said ”No team in the world depends on one or two players.” Virat couldn't have been more wrong. With the opposition starting to play some expansive forward defensives it was clear that the game was starting to get away from the Aliens. The run rate had exploded to over 3 an over and something special was required. Cometh the hour, cometh the man.
Robert John Madley was born in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England on 6th October 1985. Among his many many qualities is modesty. He will be embarrassed at this part of the match report but is only right that history will forever remember that passage of play. Navid sent down what was a fairly standard 14kph delivery, the batsmen just about having the time to adjust his box between the ball leaving the hand and arriving at his bat, he drove the ball with incredible power towards the off-side. The scorer was already adding six to the score when, from nowhere, a leaping Aliens fielder plucked the white rocket from the blue July sky. What struck the players on the field was how Madley appeared to make this look like a simple lollypop of a catch, a skill in itself. The batsman looked on wide-eyed as the ball stuck in his bucket-like hands and the phrase ´catch of the season´was already being muttered by some. Little did they know that the old theory that lightning does not strike in the same place twice was about to be ripped to shreds. If the first catch was catch of the season, what followed could well be described as catch of the century.
Winston Churchill said that ”Those who fail to learn the lessons from history are condemned to repeat it.” If only MASK player Mamo Fiaz had understood this.
Once again the Navid-Madley attack proved deadly. A quicker ball of 17kph was fired in, the batsman again attempted to smash this to the other side of Oslo fjord and once again the ball was stopped dead in its tracks. Leaping like a salmon in spring, Madley took off from his left foot. If you could take the best of Jonty Rhodes, Paul Collingood and Ben Stokes, put them in a blender for 2 minutes and pour out the mixture it would only be an amuse-bouche for what Madley served up. Even the growing number of Norwegians who had heard about the first catch and had turned up to see what the fuss was about whilst still not understanding what the game they were watching was took a sharp intake of breath as Madley held on tighter than a Scotsman ́s pocket. Having dropped two catches and missed two stumpings already, Shahabaz whispered to Madley ”can you teach me how to do that?” Unfortunately though, some things cannot be taught.
The innings closed with a fairly routine catch from Damien on the boundary and it was time for Aliens to chase down the target of just 150, a fantastic effort given the 48-0 from under 5 overs!!
The end of the bans for Steve Smith, Cameron Bancroft and David Warner couldn't have come at a worse time for Marcus Lyon. Just as he has been playing himself into the discussions of the Cricket Australia selectors their main batting talents were now available again leaving only one Lyon playing in the Ashes squad this summer. Nevertheless, Marcus was once again in the zone! A fitness freak and all round athlete, Marcus warmed up for his innings on ball one with a quick 44 yard burst from the non-striker's end, hi fived Damien, told him there wasn't a run there and cheetah-like made his way back to his own crease. During the team warm ups pre-match Marcus actually finds this so little a challenge to him that he takes himself away and does his own warm-up of 100 press ups, 100 sit ups, 100 burpees and 3 Marlboros! As I said, athlete!
The run chase was looking fairly comfortable with Damien and Marcus putting on 66 from 11 overs. However bottoms did twitch a little as a steady run a wickets fell throughout the chase. Crawf was there to steady the ship and had made it very clear that if he was too hot in the middle, he would like his pink…I mean red water bottle brought to him! At 135-5 after 26 overs, with Aliens requiring 16 from 24, Madley prepared to stroll to the middle and win the game for the Aliens with a flourish of his still unused in Norway English willow, a bat which is the only one in the history of the game with no middle and fully made up of edges!
However…with such a situation of runs being required Captain Dennis took the decision to send in Mr Kuhlwilm instead. Some saw this as an insult to the Englishman but Dennis did call Bobby that night to say it was purely because as a team he did not want everyone else to get pissed off that Madley had changed the game both in the field and with the bat. Bobby is the kind of guy to understand such things, another of his qualities, and he was delighted that other Aliens could feel that they contributed to what turned out to be 5 wicket win and 5 more points in the bag.
Overall, a very good win for the Aliens! The game finished just before 2100, to be fair a game that should have been finished 30 minutes earlier but for the bails and smashed stumps having to be replaced every time the over-excited Shahabaz took a routine throw from the field.
I guess its only fair that I should mention that the simple catch from Damien to end the MASK innings was all but that!! A wonderful diving effort from Damien in the deep, the look on his face suggesting he was more shocked than the rest of the team combined and fittingly with the third best catch of the innings the opposition were impressively kept to 150. Great team effort all round and the blues move on to the next fixture on Sunday…without Madley in the field to provide the individual brilliance they will be hoping for batting mistakes and a ́No I in team ́mentality!