No Sport for Old Men

We've had 12 games on and 4 cancelled this season. 7 won, 4 lost (two nail biters) and 1 still to play. The four cancelled we lost two to rain, one we would have lost to rain but I'm going to say it was down to Histon hosting the Lashings, and 1 was cancelled because it clashed with England playing in the World Cup. .

We've had some monster totals, clearing 170 once and 180 three times and we've had our biggest run margin win (116 runs) and game with least runs conceded (47 all out) - the same game rather unsurprisingly.

I'll do a piece on new players later, but we've had a fair few, which is always nice, and the team has trended downwards in age, leaving some of us feeling more like grandads amongst the schoolkids at times.

However, it all started on a dark sort of evening at Cambridge University Press against the firm of the same name. They batted and put on a quite modest total of 104. Purton bowled and batted well just before his season ending injury and then we stuttered in a modest chase, finding ourselves 39-4.

This brought Piers Morgan and I together for a partnership that wouldn't have looked out of place in 2011, although we're both clearing 40 now and can't see things as well as we once could, we can, if the stars align, still do the stuff on occasion.

And thus it was this night, hitting 4's the legside (and only the legside) riding our luck and running between the wickets like two geriatrics with knee problems, we put on a partnership of 66 that got us over the line with 6 wickets in hand.

It felt good to know that it can still happen. I will admit the bowling was friendly at times and the fielding was friendlier still but you've still got to hit the thing.

And that, I'm going to suggest is why the team had such a season. With a start like this, seeing two old men being able to do it, it clearly made everyone else realise they could do it too. So they did. 

None of it would ever have happened but for Piers and I (in more ways than 1), so we can take credit in the reflected glory of all the 50's, big totals and great wicket taking spells. 

Every great journey starts with a single step - in this case one that could have been assisted by a zimmerframe.