Any amateur enthusiast of the mustelidae will know the Badgers’ 2 favourite activities:
- Forage for earthworms
- Play at a cricket club with bar facilities
At Addiscombe Cricket Club, both of these are possible making it one of the top Badger destinations.
Following last year’s fixture, the Badgers smuggled home the Addiscombe captain Toby after mistaking him for Nick Foord. With Toby now on the Badgers’ side and Addiscombe short of a captain, the Badgers looked destined for victory and highly likely to drink the bar dry yet again.
With an injured Nick Foord cheering from the sidelines, the Badgers took to the field. From out of nowhere, a hail storm broke loose and pieces of ice erupted from the skies with an intensity reminiscent of Vesuvius. However, with this being a ‘proper’ grassroots cricket match, nothing can interrupt a game.
Jim (who will be referred to as ‘Rhino’ for the remainder of this article) navigated through the large chunks of ice with more success than the RMS Titanic to open up the bowling. Despite Rory and Rhino’s best efforts, Addiscombe got off to a strong start. A run out, where the ball passed through a Badger assembly line of Chris T - Cornish - Cade, was the only way to remove the opening bat leaving Addiscombe on 56-1 off 17 overs.
The only thing that can interrupt a grassroots cricket game is the presence of covers - it is quite exciting to wheel these out to the green and pretend that a much higher level of cricket is being played. Given that there were covers at Addiscombe and that the intensity of the hail storm had now reached meteor shower levels, the covers came on.
Covers are on ... Rain stops as soon as covers came on pic.twitter.com/JW8LWn6Xbh
— Battersea Badgers (@BadgersCricket) May 4, 2019
No sooner had the covers been brought on than the rain stopped (no idea if that grammatically correct). Play resumed. Despite blockbuster catches in the slips (and a drop) by Chris T, the second half of the Addiscombe innings were a bit more smashy with 170 runs coming off the last 20 overs. They eventually finished on 231-6 off 40.
Tea was wonderful and included homemade coronation chicken, sweet chilli sauce and doughnuts. There was time for the Badger opening batsmen of Toby and Josh to discuss tactics. This was largely Toby sharing his insight on each of the bowlers gleaned from his time spent as Addiscombe captain: “I brought on this guy to get you (Josh) and Cornish out last year … and he did it in the same over!”
Spurred on by tea, the Badgers went into bat. The batting deck was tricky and unpredictable (when is it not?) and, on this occasion, the Badgers were unable to find a rhythm. With high levels of grit (no pun intended), the Australians took the Badgers to 68/4 off 19 overs before Ben was removed in the 26th with the Badgers on 110 runs. This was the period when the Addiscombe batsmen made their worm grow quickly. Unfortunately, the Badgers were not able to replicate and ended up losing by about 60 runs.
Lesson learned: Don’t leave your trainers out in a hail storm or they will get very wet.
Chris Shone: This is the saddest thing I have ever seen pic.twitter.com/VWBXXFtVmM
— Battersea Badgers (@BadgersCricket) May 4, 2019