iBat; iBowl; iPad

 OSCC, 71 all out, got about halfway against Leverstock Green, 155 all out

iPad

At the captain's request (for a direct line please dial 0-9 for Wardy) I'm not allowed to mention what effect Saturday's result has had on our survival prospects.

However, I think I am free to point out this challenging mathematical poser, namely what would happen if you took the points we have accumulated in the Bedfordshire league (depleted by 10 after Sunday's concession) and added them to those we have accumulated in the Saracens League?

Answer: we'd still be pretty severely fucked....

Things did not begin well on Saturday. 

Richie Barker missed out with a nasty toe injury (laughably sustained attempting to bowl seam in the nets) and Danny O'Brien was forced to withdraw on the morning of the match after a tough week at work.

Roger Piepenstock, a man who lives within a stone's throw of the ground, although perhaps not if that stone is being thrown by an Offley fielder, subsequently turned up late and missed out on helping prepare the pitch as he busied himself getting the iPad set up.

Anyone who has looked at the scorecard will have seen how well he did this by the fact that the new ball was apparently entrusted to Daniel Goord.

Goord made his debut for the club in 2014 and has subsequently taken three wickets.

Therefore the sight of him apparently opening the bowling suggested Captain Ward had not only lost the toss (one job) but also lost his marbles - unless of course operating and setting up the iPad isn't quite as simple as Roger insists.

In fact it was the Silver Servers (they share the same hair colour and serve up the odd wicket-taking delivery and the odd boundary) Steve Denton & Darren Lunney who opened the attack and did a reasonable job of keeping the openers in check with the aid of just seven fielders.

However, the breakthrough did not materialise and Ward thus threw the ball to Peter Gilkes, the silver fox whose introduction into the attack typically has the same effect as the introduction of a real fox into a hen house - which is to say fielders start running around in all directions like headless chickens trying to locate the ball.

Yet on this day Gilkes was inspired and doubled his wicket tally for the season, his previous four wickets having come at a cost of 65 runs apiece.

He hit the stumps, he found the edge and even when he found the middle of the bat he occasionally got some help from his fielders.

After warming up with three wides in his first four deliveries, Gilkes struck as he embarked upon a spell of 4-43, comfortably the best figures by an Offley bowler in the Saracens League this year.

The demon bowler rehydrates with vital electrolytes

He got good support from Ben Southgate who picked up a couple of scalps and also contributed a run out as the nine men of Offley believed and dared to dream.

In Wayne Cutts' case he was dreaming of new comfortable shoes after shredding his feet for the cause in a pair of battered Adidas that were filled with blood. 

Another frustrating eighth wicket partnership looked to have pushed the game beyond Offley before Ward claimed three quick wickets to polish off the tail.

Serving up the usual concoction of no balls (one of which produced a catch for Denton), pies and the occasional lethal delivery, Ward took 3-24 (Denton claiming a catch off a legal delivery) to bundle Leverstock Green out for 155.

Goord and Ward took seven runs off the opening over from the comically poshly named What-Ho Carruthers from Newcastle, a one-man Metallica concert who sounded as though he'd received elocution lessons from Paul Gascoigne.

At this point things were going well - more so than on the iPad which had got the identity of the bowlers wrong, thereby confusing Carruthers with one Hamid. 

Fortunately old school cricketer Wayne Cutts was on hand with pen and paper to rectify the issue in the scorebook.

Unfortunately out in the middle things were going rather less well.

Goord, a man whose game is built upon the cut and the hack outside off stump, decided to add a new spoke to his wagonwheel. The result was a simple catch for square leg.

Having walked to the middle with a club-best 227 runs to his name in 2024, Goord duly walked off with what is still a club-best 227 runs to his name in 2024.

At the other end Ward had his stumps demolished by a rapid delivery that cut back before Southgate was undone by one that bounced and went away to leave Offley in some strife on 13-3.

What-Ho Curruthers was then convinced he had dismissed his fellow refugee from the Tyne, Lunney, LBW.

The bowler was in no doubt, loudly beseeching Umpire Denton to know why it wasn't out, "And don't tell me it was missing the stumps!"

Umpire Denton's answer "He hit it" did little for What-Ho's sense of humour but, in reprieving Lunney, Denton had laid a trap for the remaining batting fodder to blunder into if they were foolish enough to allow the ball to hit their pads.

And thus to Steve Bexfield.

By his own admission Bexfield was up for the fight, swaying out of the way of bouncers, dropping his gloves, riding the bounce and throwing a few punches of his own.

Only seven days previously Umpire Bexfield had ruled against Batter Denton when the latter was bowled by what the opposition thought might have been a no ball (no one else did).

Had Denton nursed the grudge and sense of betrayal over the intervening seven nights? It seems unlikely.

Nonetheless there was almost something foretold that Denton would be standing when Bexfield was next struck on the pad and subject to a ferocious LBW shout.

Pretty safe prediction considering Denton normally umpires the first half of the innings and number three Bexfield is usually in within two overs.

It kept low.

It jagged back.

Dear old What-Ho was in no doubt it was flattening middle (or clipping leg, depending on one's point of view) and jumped around and hollered and gibbered like a rare species of Northern monkey that had just sat on something hot.

The tragedy unfolded as Denton's finger slowly rose while Bexfield stood rooted to the spot, desperately trying to work out what had gone wrong. 

iPad Up

Had he taken the wrong guard? 

Played the wrong line?

Regardless it was 27-4.

Piepenstock now joined Lunney who was showing a willingness to put his head in where it hurts by ducking into a succession of bouncers and allowing as many deliveries as possible to hit him.

Lunney heroically shielded Piepenstock from the final three overs of the rapid Hamid, much to the disappointment of the crowd who were keen to see Piepenstock unleash hell and go Russell Crow on Hamid and treat everyone to some entertainment.

We were not entertained

The pair added 22 for the fifth wicket - comfortably the highest partnership of the innings - before the patented Piepenstock Pendulum Prod was deployed once too often and he was bowled for a gritty 10.

Gilkes strove to build on his bowling performance by producing heroics with the bat. Alas, he simply produced a simple return catch and was dismissed for the third Offley duck of the day.

Lunney fell for a season-best 27 before the final two batters Denton and Cutts both also produced their best scores of the season, 6 apiece in a rumbunctious last wicket stand of 11. 

Resplendent in mustard Timberlands, unquestionably the first man to bat at Offley in such courageous footwear, Cutts pummelled his first boundary of the post-Covid era before he tried and died in a brave attempt to clear mid on.

It was all over.

So three batters recorded their highest score of the season and two bowlers produced season-best figures and we still lost by 84 runs.

Spiffy.

A (spoiler alert) relegation party in the Jay Raj helped take the edge off defeat as the all-important question surrounding our fate next year remains to be resolved.

Are we likely to find ourselves in Division 10 West or 10 North?

 Defeated But Defiant