THE COLTS V. FLAMSTEAD : PART 2 - LEAGUE : 23/11/10

A long time ago, in a Dairy Milk far, far away…it is a period of uncivil war. Rebel Colts, striking from a hidden base, have won consecutive victories against evil foes in the Vets division of the Outer Rim Indoor Cricket league. The last bastion with an unbeaten record were Flamstead who we had beaten well in the Intergalactic Cup the week before. Captain “Flash – Aha – He’ll Save Every One of Us” Prefab had his team in hyper-drive and at warp speed as they took one further giant leap towards a cosmic “Double”. Along for the trek were David “R2D2” Whiteley, Andrew “Ming the Merciless” Hedges, Mike “Captain, I Cannae Hold Her - She’s Gonna Blow” Howard, Stephen “Uranus” Ball and Simon “Bones” Williams. All we needed were some dilithium crystals and remember that this was a group that had done the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsepts (whatever the Hell that means).

With phasers set to stun the crowd, Captain “Flash” showed stern, Kirk-ish leadership ability by telling his team that his intention was to sweep the local atmosphere for impurities (Redbourn spies) and then bowl. One by one each member of the crew showed mutinous tendencies by saying that we should bat. “Flash” bottled it like a Vulcan drinking vodka shots and agreed to bat despite a recent personal record that would make a Wookie blush (if you could tell). “Flash” (37* in 19) actually did OK after whopping out his light sabre but he was perilously close to being run out in the second over as Mr. Spock in the commentary booth called the decision at the non-striker’s end “illogical”. “R2D2” (13 in 13) was struggling to get going after a good run of form and he fell to a soft catch after driving a straight 6. “Scotty” Howard (44* in 20) was hot like a nova and he set pulses racing before retiring to leave “Bones” (15 in 7), “Ming” (13 in 4) and “Uranus” (8 in 2) to take aim at the back wall like shooting wamp-rats in the swamp back home. “Ming” jabba’d one asteroid over Saturn’s outer rings for an 8 using his new improved Bradbury-blaster before admitting afterwards that “I didn’t really get hold of it”. The Colts are peerless in this form of the game at accelerating and 61-1 after 6 overs was followed by taking 88 from the last 6 to post an imposing 149-4. Like the Death Star on a Saturday night this was enough to frighten anyone especially with the Imperial Guard loosening up to bowl.

Flamstead’s innings was the perfect example of the Colts’ potency in this form of the game. Putting away his sonic screw-driver, Captain “Flash” threw the ball to his opening daleks to “exterminate” the Flamstead top order. Before you could say “Saucy, young, ginger minx side-kick who Bally may fancy” it was 15-4 and the match was over. “Scotty” (3-0-11-2) warped one opener third ball and the next two followed with catches to the ‘keeper, one easy and one decent (like space vixen sisters) whilst the fourth was caught by “R2D2” at the wall. The batsmen’s totals at this stage were 0,0,5,2 which coincidentally is the dialling code for Pluto. “Ming” (33-0-18-1) also had a decent figure like Princess Leia in the gold bikini. The Colts’ total by this stage was “to Infinity and Beyond” for Flamstead and it was left to “Mark” (26* in 27) and skipper “Graham” (26* in 18) to fend off the remaining overs. Well, when I say fend off, that would be doing the “Uranus” second over a major injustice. By the wrath of Khan, skipper “Graham” decided that someone was going to pay for the blowing up of his entire planet and “Uranus” was the bowler of choice. It was as if the back wall had a tractor beam as the asteroid was fizzed back with interest. Of course this can happen to any spinner on any given day but you have to be careful if you then decide to whizz back a photon torpedo in the general direction of the batsman at the end of the over. It wasn’t as if “Graham” was even wearing a tactical re-con battle helmet and he watched “Uranus” behave very Un-Obi-Wan-Kenobi-like by throwing his space-bricks out of the starship. An inter-galactic incident was avoided with the usual diplomacy from “Flash”. Flamstead hit the end credits at 83-4 preventing a few bonus points but if they thought it was all yoda……it very nearly is now.

MoM: Captain “Flash” moonraked his way in to contention but “Scotty” Howard moonwalked the decision with 44* and 3-0-11-2.