CHAPELIZOD: 143 All out
Mahesh 48 Greg 13 Rob 13
Ross 10-1-30-3 Cosy 5-0-11-2 Mahesh 2-0-6-1 J.Egan 9-0-32-1 Rob 3-0-3-0
HALVERSTOWN: 103 for 10 (Not an error: 12 players!)
Sean Conroy 15 K.Hodson 14 D.Drumm 8 H.Beaumont 8 Extras 47 (!)
D.Drumm 6.5-0-25-5 K.Hodson 8-0-25-2 J. Browne 5-1-22-1
Sean Conroy 6-1-26-1 G.Bayer 3-0-20-0 D.O'Ceallaigh 2-0-10-0 E.Maguire 3-0-15-0
MATCH DRAWN
Saturday night and, as Bruce Springsteen sang, “57 channels and nothin' on”. So a DVD was dug out and Jeanette and I watched “Tristan and Isolde”, a teen-style romantic swashbuckler supposedly based on the mediaeval legend of Tristan and Iseult. Although you could do worse than watch it, you probably couldn't do much worse. It is just a legend, but taking such liberties with the historical context was annoying. The Irish were the baddies who invaded England, using the divide and rule approach to the English tribes, who (except for a sneaky one or two) were the goodies. Wait a minute! Shouldn't that be the other way round?! The only faintly “true” bit was that Isolde was the daughter of an Irish king, which she was in 12th century Anglo- Norman/ Celtic legend.
Coincidentally we were playing Chapelizod the next day. Chapelizod: “Seipeal Iosoid”, Iseult's Chapel. A historic village on the edge of Dublin in which I spent over 14 years of my working life. Home to Sheridan le Fanu and his “Ghost Stories of Chapelizod”. His “House by the Graveyard” is still there, as is “Sunnybank”, the house of Viscount Northcliffe (the Rupert Murdoch of his day) and the Mullingar House, home to James Joyce's Anna Livia Plurabelle.
At Chapelizod's request it was a timed game, to finish at 20 overs after 5pm- probably the right decision given the uncertainty of the weather but they may have regretted their request ! Winning the toss, they batted first and lost 3 wickets in the first 3 overs, thanks to some accurate bowling by Kevin Hodson and the evergreen John Browne. But they rallied and Mahesh hit an excellent 48 before Sean Conroy trapped him LBW. Gunter Bayer 's runout was the highlight of his time in the field but I must,modestly of course, acclaim my own “fifer” (a corruption of “five for”, apparently). I took 5 wickets for 25 in almost 7 overs, and extraordinarily they were all bowled out- an unusual occurrence I would hazard. Kevin's 2 for 25 was also worth noting as well as tidy overs from “newbies” Deaglain O'Ceallaigh and Eoin Maguire. However, it did not stop Chapelizod running up a decent total of 143.
Knowing that we had “Boom Boom” Bayer hidden safely down the order we felt pretty smug, especially after Kevin and Sean put on an opening partnership of over 40 runs. In the batting line-up I had then put in players new to the team or the game. Unfortunately 4 of them scored just the 1 run before I brought in Gunter, our knight in shining armour, who would bat alongside our Isolde, Yvonne Frayne, and save the day. Yvonne went the way of other new players unfortunately whilst Gunter was run out for a mere 2. Tristan indeed! Plan B:I went in at No.9 with a the total at 82 runs and 17 overs left to play. Do we go for the win or try to bat out for the draw? Hubert joined me at the crease and had obviously decided the former whilst I prevaricated. Hubert was out for 8 fairly shortly so it was now the latter! I was joined by first time batsman young Ryan Hodson who bravely scored 4 whilst I stonewalled everything I could. John Browne, our last batsman, joined me for the remaining 9 overs. No better man to have with you! We stole runs at the end of every over so I could face the bulk of the bowling and we battled and blocked everything for a famous draw! Chapelizod were graceful in what must have seemed like defeat whilst we were jubilant at a draw snatched from defeat, that was originally going to be a win! Honours even.