This is an excerpt from Return To The Crease, which you can purchase here from Amazon.
Today saw me make my debut for the Sunday side. We were off to play Clifton at Nottingham Trent University, not a place I’d ever been to despite having myself been to university in the Midlands. Anyway, we were put in to field first, and the pitch looked an absolute belter, the outfield was as quick as anything so the batsmen had everything going for them. We didn’t bowl badly, but they had a lot of players who’d played at a pretty high level; they even had England international Jenny Gunn in their side!
They amassed 318 all out from 35 overs. I fielded pretty well to start with but then it all went a bit pear shaped. I had a run out that I should have made, then there was an awful misjudgement where a ball went straight through me. That saw me despatched to field at deep backward square, and rightly so. However, with my eyesight in desperate need of another visit to the opticians, I effectively spurned two catches as I couldn’t pick them up early enough. At least I didn’t let them go through me for four but still, not very pleasing.
As expected, their bowling attack was fierce, and we quickly found ourselves at 50 for 4, which was my cue to put some pads on. I was in them for a long while, as our fifth wicket partnership took us past the hundred mark before it was finally my turn. I got off the mark with an inside edge down to fine leg. At least I wouldn’t get a duck. Then I had to play some spin, a nice off-drive picked up another before I threw it all away. I decided to come down the pitch and launch him over his head. Unfortunately, I didn’t commit fully, ended up leaning rather than launching, missed the ball, lost my balance, and was stumped. An inglorious end to an inglorious innings.
The end of our innings wasn’t long after that, we didn’t stick around for long after so I can’t tell you the exact score – we must have lost by over 150 runs.