Sundown Specials

Smiler steers Specials home against Horizontals

After the shenanigans at Lower Hall in May sanity prevailed and friendships consolidated as the Specials got the better of the Horizontals in a low scoring game at Southover.

In 2003 and 2004 this fixture had produced run feasts for both teams but on a wet, grey day it was the bowlers who took charge. Under instructions from acting skipper Mark Naisbitt I tossed up and duly inserted the Horizontals on a damp green wicket.

I decided to ignore the advice from Steve Golding who thought we should bat - apparently he is very influenced by Marcus Trescothwick's captaincy. Batting in steady drizzle, Clarke and Qawi made slow but steady progress against the usual mean bowling from Dave Cattell and new boy James Vassay who made scoring difficult on a damp and slow wicket. With the score on 18 Clarke pulled Cattell to midwicket where Luke Vassay dived forward to take an excellent catch.

Sporting a cut above his left eye after some binge drinking on Friday night, where he fell over on a London street, Luke had put behind him the disastrous dropped catch the previous week against Enfield. Murray was then brilliantly caught by the inspired Naisbitt off the bowling of Cattell, a catch over his shoulder whilst running downhill.

Another inspired bowling change occurred with the introduction of the part time bowler with 400+ wickets to his name - you guessed it: me. Bannjee took a liking to my bowling with successive fours. It wasn't third time lucky as next ball I removed his off stump. Winteringham and captain Simon Warren were removed by Cattell and me. Luke Vassay came on and he dismissed Qawi bowled off his pads for 20.

Wickets continued to fall on a difficult pitch as Vassay bowled Steve Moore (4), and Peter Fairbairn (7), was bowled by Medlock .At 70-8 . Dave Scally came in at 10 and after Bloor's resistance had been ended by the returning Cattell, he and veteran Barry Needham added 19 for the last wicket. Needham was last out caught at short leg by Golding off the Cat who returned the remarkable figures of 13.2-6-11-4. This in the absence of regular opening partner who was absent celebrating his son's third birthday amongst the hooded teenagers of Ladbroke Grove.

After another high quality tea and, in the absence of the usual vultures, the Specials began their reply in better conditions. Dave Scally opened the bowling up the hill and had early success, bowling Golding to a dreadful shot in his second over. Banjjee opened up down the hill and after an expensive first over gradually put the batsmen under pressure, He deserved his reward when bowling the out of touch Cedric De Silva to make it 26-2.

Scally then bowled 5 consecutive maidens but Andy Vernon continued to keep the score going Winteringham, introduced down the hill, found the right ball- a full toss to catch the out of form McGowan;. Bagmaster Cotsen entered the fray but not for long as and when Vernon was bowled we were 52-5 .

Tony Medlock went on the counter attack joined by myself at seven hitting two fours off Scally who was undeservedly removed from the attack after an eleven over spell that cost only twenty-two runs. His replacement, Murray got rid of Medlock as he mistimed sweep At 78-6 we had work to do but myself (19 n.o) and Luke Vassay (10 n0.) saw us home .

An impressive captain's performance from M Naisbitt who was watched by his younger brother Ivan, aspiring Film Director. The talk in the bar was the sight of Ivan's partner Jet smoozing with the celebrities at Live 8 ,which then turned to the original concert in 1985 and then neatly steered by Ivan to his footballing exploits in the early to mid 80's for Victoria Park and his hat trick against Oakleaf in November 1987. Those were the salad days in more ways than one for this Barnet Sunday league legend.

Naisbitt senior was happy with the performance of his charges and I left him the problem of motivating Bagmaster Cotsen who seemed to think a time poor mover and shaker as myself had time on his hands for this task. Wrong again.

Finally at the request of teammates I will not be divulging the names of members of the porn dvd library club although one of the club's senior pros caught the team's attention with the offer of a seven-hour dvd as a tool to motivate some of the more lack lustre members of the team. Good work.