WAMMO - Fantasy Cricket

We generally enjoy our visits to Fettes to play Grange, though we generally enjoy the off-field activities more than the on-field. There's the annual search for CJ Barker's name on the College honours board in the historic pavilion with its historic/fetid (Fettid?) loos. There's the annual wondering why N Webb and the pool team don't have a board of their own. Towards the end there's the annual boundary golf. And in between there's the annual defeat.

Best name ever? WAMMO Montgomery-Cuninghame.

This year's defeat was less crushing than some, and certainly less crushing than our earlier meeting this season, but only for strange reasons that we'll come to later.

The game started quite well as Ross took a tumbling catch in the covers to dismiss Metcalfe and optimism began to spread as Collister (hotfoot, or rather hot-tyred, along with Andy G from a Grange hockey match on the other side of the vast Fettes sports campus) scored all his early runs with aerial shots sliced through the covers while Bray played and missed. But positivity was as ill-judged as the shorts worn by three of our number on the coldest and windiest afternoon of the season and Collister (112) and Bray (78) built a fine 200 run stand. Gerry Lohan and Matt Henton in particular bowled well early on and there was a flurry of wickets in the last few overs, but this stand was the basis of a formidable 238 for 6.

Any tea to which Aqeel Aslam has contributed is a fine tea, but sadly it didn't fortify the Cross batting much. When the rain that had been threatening all afternoon finally arrived to put paid to the game we were 84 for 5 in the 22nd over, thanks in no small part to a fine spell from Tomar (6-1-9-2).

It was, therefore, with some surprise that we found a few days later that we had only lost by 52 runs according to the ESCA Rain Calculator. The Rain Calculator is a mysterious beast. Earlier this season it decided that Stirling County 3rds, 77 for 7 against us when the game was abandoned after 25 overs, would have gone on to make 134. Now it peered into the future and opined that our last five wickets would have added a further 102 runs at over 4 an over.

Of course, Andy G was 16 not out at the end and already biffing merrily (and oddly straight and offsidedly), so perhaps the Rain Calculator saw another Graham ton on the way. Or maybe it thought Gerry and Smudge were set to sweep and scamper the runs? Or perhaps Andy Donaldson was going to open his mighty shoulders and spank some sixes? We hear that the ESCA boffins will be working through the winter to upgrade the system to produce extrapolated scorecards, but for now, sadly, we will never know.