Sunday September 13 at Marlow
Match cancelled
For a country that labels itself as the home of cricket, you would think it never rains in England, and this week’s match for the Fleet Strollers was scheduled to be played 42,070 metres (block to block) from the Home of Cricket (Lord's Cricket Ground) at Marlow Park Cricket Club.
The Strollers' weather correspondent Brad Trebilcock, an ex-farmer from the depths of the West Coast of New Zealand where they measure rain in metres, not inches, had predicted that the early morning's weather would clear at 12:25pm, a critical five minutes before play was scheduled to begin.
This gave hope to the Stollers, who are starting to see the end of the season and realise that the long wait between innings during the winter is upon them.
As the Strollers began their travels from London to Marlow, they would travel through rain showers before arriving at the ground. The arrival time for all Strollers matches is 30 minutes before play, but these Strollers were professionals of the game and arrived even earlier – 11:50am, to find what no cricketer wants to see, a groundsman waiting by the gate shaking his head. Cricket has been cancelled for the day, with a recent downpour rendering the pitch unplayable.
Young Trebilcock was beside himself. It was like a scene from Lord of the Rings, as the young man had just seen Gandalf fall into the deeps of Moria to sacrifices himself for the Fellowship and the young hobbit from Middle Earth didn’t know where to go or what to do on a Sunday that does not involve cricket. Would he have to go home to his dearly beloved and talk to her, spend time with her? It had been so long since a Sunday without cricket had occurred.
After 10 minutes Trebilcock came to his senses as a bottle of beer was placed into his hands by Sir Ben Mangham as he said: “A day may come when the courage of men fails...but it is not this day, this day we go to the pub!”
So, we all put our phones away to not alert our better halves that the game was called off, and we marched to the George and the Dragon, a fine establishment where young Stroller Finlay Perrin had once worked, however this day we were served by the lovely Sofiia.
Roasts were the treat of the day, as the Strollers mused over previous rain delays. We sat outside in the muggy sweaty heat of Marlow as we thought of what could have been: Freddie Broster-Turley said he would have taken a hat-trick; Sean Bourke said he would have hit six sixes in an over; Steve Wilson said he would have taken five stumpings; Steve Rogers said he would have toned up. Brad Trebilcock, sitting there quietly, eventually came out and said: “I properly would have got another duck. The rain, I think, saved my average today.”
As the afternoon went on, the Strollers started thinking about all the things they could be doing to make the next day a little easier, so at that point it was time to rejoin the realities of life and head home.