B’s ? in 20 overs

Goathland ? in about 13 overs

Goathland is a pretty little village in North Yorkshire where the popular ITV soap Heartbeat was filmed – it is also a place Mildert B got schooled.

Mildert B chose to bat 1st on a wicket that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the jungle of Borneo. Foolishly we thought we could set a target – we didn’t. To be fair their bowlers (mostly on school holidays) bowled well and an 11 year did well to snaffle Hind for 1. Most of the rest of the batting was made of short cameos (if you can call them that), but credit must go to Adam Berry for staying their and Stips for finaly proving that he can hit a six and is able to “perform” for Mildert B.

We didn’t get many wickets, but Goathland did manage to find the boundary frequently, whereas mildert B had emulated the England 1-day team by only getting 1s and 2s. Their standout batsmen was about 70 (literally) and boy could he hit it – scoring 50ish of about 20 balls. Ina final desperate attempt to save face, Mildert B introduced the Noodles spaceball/dive-bomb/high-chuck/call-it-what-you-want. It didn’t work. A young buck, in those difficult teenage years, by some fluke picked the trajectory perfectly (maybe he was using radar?) and dispatched a flat six through the pavilion window. Bang went his pocket money – anybody in the dressing room would have been killed by flying glass, some of which lodged itself in the pavilion wall. Fortunately all we had to do was pick the glass out of our well travelled cricket bags and Stu thanked the Lord that his camcorder had narrowly avoided destruction. Although Goathland won easily, Mildert B applied themselves well and looked sharp in the field. We were simply outclassed.

A massive thanks to the fans who obviously enjoyed watching from a pub beer garden and especially to Laura for unveiling the Mildert B flag! After the game our hosts were kind enough to invite us to another pub where a good time was had by all. I believe a Mildert B cap now has pride of place in Goathland’s trophy cabinet. Hopefully we can win it back sometime!

Right now, we are ranked as the 182^nd BEST TEAM IN THE WORLD (if that isn’t a tagline for the website I don’t know what is) and have 4 men (Hodge, Stu, Atko and Barney) in the league’s dream team. Atko got in there because he only bowls at tail-enders, fact.

With three matches remaining, including a grudge match against the FOS, the league title is still very much up for grabs. I think it’s fair to say we have been guilty of not getting enough runs up on the board in some matches, but our fielding has been pretty tight, especially in a recent match against The Glory, when we managed to defend a total of 154 despite having only 6 players, including Stu, who was drunk. Bowling has been consistent, with some great performances: Beech put in a sterling 4 overs the other week despite being so ill he looked like he might die at any minute.

Full stats can be viewed here