2010 rounders gala report

Editor's Note: Due to an astonishing consumption of vodka, wkd and John's Pimms, this may ramble a tad

Images from the day now available in our gallery!

A glorious sunny Sunday afternoon in August, Elton Vale packed with teams, spectators by the dozen, drinks by the bucketload ... this is a brief recap of Tottington St Johns Ladies Rounders adventures on and off the field. I rolled up at EV to discover almost every team hard at work warming up, throwing the ball about, stretching, loosening up ... except for one. True to form, our glorious ladies were already hard at work demolishing a hefty stack of booze. That's those who'd made it by that point, there were several incapacitated from the night before who would turn up later ...

Our first game arrived at 10.30; the Cricketers provided opposition from Division 3, and hence we were given a 10 point start - with Byron not yet in place, I added scoring to my vast list of duties assumed in 2010, though on this occasion I was able to take the clipboard with double vodka and coke in one hand and the remnants of SJD's "hair of the dog" blue WKD in the other. Nice. Just half an hour into the day's drinking, sorry gala, it immediately became obvious that some of our girls were possibly already experiencing double vision - Jane in particular appeared incapable of even picking the ball up, and when she did, she chose to whizz it at the running batters - well not so much at them as miles past them (generally accompanied with a little squeal).

With Fluffy not yet present, we'd recruited Jemski and another of her team; thankfully our daft 5 minutes in the field calmed down and we steadily dismissed the opposition. Danielle and Katie took good catches in the outfield, and there was an impressively good bowling spell from Vicky to counter one or two howlers from those not used to bowling! Really - it's just throwing a tennis ball at peoples' heads, folks ... of which more later!

Cricketers eventually totalled 78, which included just 9 no balls - an impressively low tally considering everyone had to have a turn, and one which would be important in the final reckoning. Totts innings however began very slowly, with the first 12 good balls producing just 14 points - at this point it looked odds on that we were heading for a dismal defeat. And then Danielle appeared at bat. "Watch this", I said to the other scorer, "she'll hit it 5 feet and get a rounder". I'm telling you, Nostradamus has nowt on me - Dan hit it 5 feet and raced round to choruses of "meep meep" from the sidelines. Nice! We were off and running now, and when Jemski and a couple of others also managed to get round, we were suddenly right back in the match. With 9 balls to go, a flurry of points took us into the lead, and from there on, victory was guaranteed. Our eventual winning total of 91 did contain 17 no balls, which just goes to show the importance of that!

It was nice to see that we'd achieved a victory even without the help of the handicap 10 points; I returned to my chair pleased with the the simplicity of scoring (Byron, take note), and even more pleased to see that my next vodka and coke had been boosted with an injection of a splash of blue WKD and some of John's fruit-filled Pimms! Lovely. I'm not quite sure how he did it, but the fruit punch contained about 15 different fruits, including strawberries, raspberries, blackcurrant, kiwi fruit, apple, and possibly a kumquat or two. Actually, it was just strawberries in the main, but that sounds more exotic.

My recollection of the next hour or so is pretty much a blur. I have absolutely no idea what happened in the other two rounders games we played*, other than we won the first and then lost to the eventual winners! I do clearly recall shouting quite loudly at young Luxton, fetching several platters of chips, and we all booed Fluffy for playing for another team when she arrived (the shame!). Wayne and Tony were on a mission to finish the stella, while everyone else was becoming increasingly sozzled. The Totty way!

* this isn't strictly true. There were two girls from the Blue Bury team playing for us in game 2, and I shouted "Come on Blue Burys", at which Byron turned round and gave me a look of death. And we won.

Our 3rd game defeat left us outside of the playoffs, and so it was decided to have a couple of inter-Totty matches; we started with boys v girls, in which my side registered an imposing victory over the girls, mainly thanks to some stupendous bowling and fielding from us, and some remarkable sledging of the opposition. There was some marvellous cheating employed by the opposition, but their resounding defeat just goes to show that cheating doesn't pay! Ha! And then we embarked on a second game, which gradually descended into farce and only contained one innings - somehow Michelle who was on my side had her bat, got out, started umpiring, then scoring and ended up bowling for the other side. Marvellous! Oh and I was given out despite a clear infringement of "no ball high". Not that I'm bitter.

As the more serious proceedings wound down, we all reflected on a quite fantastic day in the sun; the rounders was good, the company superb, and we all had a cracking 6 or 7 hours. After the fun of the gala day at Crompton Meadows a couple of months ago, this was on a whole new level! Many thanks to everyone for a lot of laughs!