Mountain to Climb at Mill Hill

Wrote by Gav Kay;

The 2nds promotion charge took a hit at the weekend with a frustrating loss to Mill Hill Village 1st XI. Having driven down a 15 mile dirt track and passed a similar number of garden centre’s the troops arrived at the ground to an uncovered double ridged pitch with accompanying mountains to run up. A heavily hungover Siva led the warm up though I’m not convinced his heart was in it and JB appeared equally unenthused battling child induced gut trauma. It was a day to win a toss and field, Pegg duly picked the wrong side of the coin (again) and we were put into Bat.

The Mill Hill opening bowlers bowled line and length and were helped by a spicy deck that accounted for a number of the Broxbourne batsman. In fact the pitch turned JB's stomach so much he had to abort the day and hand his white’s to chief cheerleader JB junior (Lloyd) who amazingly hadn’t brought a vat of San Miguel with him. Batting continued to be a challenge with Symms, having launched a lovely pulled four tried to repeat the feat on a yorker – not one for the purists. The innings progressed in similar fashion with Fergie, Kay and Pegg finding inventive ways to get out and the more talented Muz nicking a ball the rest of us would have safely played and missed at (he is a big fan of Kate Cross though). Robin ‘keep batting’ Glassberg knuckled down and led the team to 133 all out, when he ran out JB junior who was running off balance with his helmet resting on his sizable swede.

133 seemed a defendable target with a good start but the Mill Hill opener batted very well, despite playing and missing at Pegg 34 times, he did claim after the game 50% of those were legitimate . Glassberg and Harvey dealt with the mountains in the way of the run up very well and were able to turn the screw but the Badgers were always chasing the game which concluded after 41 overs of the Mill Hill innings. As we consoled ourselves with a bottle of Carlsberg, which makes Fosters seem appealing, it was felt at the end we were about 40 runs short of a competitive total – Onwards and upwards, the promotion charge is still on despite the set-back. UTB.