The Steele Family, 175-6, beat OSCC, 73 all out, by 102 runs Offley produced one of the more inept batting displays in their history as they crashed to humiliating defeat at the hands of the Steele Family. Considering the sport, the Steeles played an unusual 4-4-2 formation featuring four players named Steele, four players not named Steele and two ringers in the form of Josh Hook and Darren Lunney.  For reasons that became apparent long before the end they didn't feel the need to bring an 11th player, making do instead with substitute Offley fielders. On a day when only two Offley batsmen reached double figures (actually it was three but one of those was Hook), the game was done and dusted long before the scheduled drinks interval. Lunney, the Geordie Judas, was the destroyer-in-chief as he ran through the top of the Offley order to record figures of 4-3-4-4, leaving the Offley batting lineup looking like an X-rated version of Watership Down . The visitors batted first and p...

  OSCC 223-8 beat Lilley 105 by 118 runs Offley gained their opening victory of the 2022 season by thrashing local rivals Lilley. To quote the Geordie tones of stand-in skipper Darren Lunney, there was nor way this would be anything but a bit of Lilley hammer.... Despite a Covid disruption on the morning of the match and despite a couple of Offley players swelling the Lilley ranks (including Ali Shah who swelled them quite a bit), Offley were far too strong for James Ashby's men. Offley batted first and their innings of 223-8 was underpinned by 95 from Josh Hook. The darts supremo picked the Lilley bowling apart with unerring accuracy as he threaded the ball through the field. Despite his proficiency with the arrows, you won't often see Hook running a treble. Indeed his darts player physique may have cost him a century as the Baby Viking (non-darts enthusiasts can search online for Andy Fordham) was run out in the final over for 95. While Hook dominated the scorecard, there wer...

  To some, Rehaan Samdani will always be known as Tom Crossley's sidekick. To others, he is the twin brother Zayn Malik never had. And to any batsman who has managed to last more than 20 minutes against him in the middle, he is the supple-hipped, loose-lipped source of a series of humerous observations and comments that are designed to get under the batter's skin and invariably lead to dismissal.  Rehann may not be the greatest bowler in Offley history but he is undoubtedly The Man when it comes to sledging.  He may be a dead-ringer for One Direction's finest but when it comes to spinning it he can turn it both ways. Samdani first appeared for Offley in 2016, another player to be lured to the club as a result of Chairman Tattersall's habit of drinking in some of Luton's more salacious nightspots and always willing to share a pint and a chat with, well anyone really. In this case he was drinking with students. Among the players to have been recruited to the Offley ra...

 OSCC, 149-5, lost to The Spiritualists, 144-9, by 1 wicket (No, it's not a misprint, the book was added up three times and came to 144 but there you go) Many years ago Offley & Stopsley CC (and indeed going further back Stopsley CC) endured a contentious rivalry with a team who seemed determined to stretch the laws of the game further than Peter Gilkes' waistband. This predilection for the dark arts was somewhat at odds with their supposed spirituality and over the years Offley fell victim to a flooded square, an attempt to overturn a hit wicket dismissal on the grounds that the batsman had trodden on a pebble and it had spun back on to the stumps and myriad other incidents. On one occasion a Stopsley player wrecked his ankle, breaking bone and tearing ligaments and had to be rushed to hospital causing the game to be abandoned. Rather than offering up a prayer for the fallen, the Spiritualists got the arse because the match had not resumed.  On another occasion, when one ...

" Tonight, he's pitching against time, he's pitching against the future,  against age, against ending,  to push the sun back into the sky and give us one more day of summer." For the record those words from For Love of the Game  form the single most beautiful quote from any sport movie, (narrowly surpassing Slap Shot's "Suzanne sucks pussy!") and one that is very apt with the first match of the season just around the corner. Regardless of whether you think this is the 25th season in the history of Offley & Stopsley Cricket Club or it represents the club's 25th anniversary (and either way life's too short to get too worked up about such matters), it is now at hand. It doesn't matter whether you're over 50 or act like a stroppy teenager, if you can't feel a frisson of excitement about the first game then it's probably time to look for a different sport. Throughout the squad are players with points to prove. Scott Boatwright le...