Where beer does flow and men chunder

In my new role as P.R. wallah for CO Smith & Sons the following news reaches me from Sydney.


Our antipodean correspondent reports that CA Smith (Holy Cross ACC 1992 - 2011) has played his first game of cricket down under for Cardinal Lynch's (HCACC 2009-2011) team.

Smudge visits Bondi

In a strange case of pot calling the kettle black, he was very critical of the "bad chat" on the field of play. Our correspondent reports that "he scratched around for 2", but at least he didn't have the nerve to blame the high standard of the opposition bowling. The Cardinal scored a ton.

This will be CA's only appearance of the season. Cricket down under is currently having a summer break and then he's going to continue his work in Malawi.


Three things in this dispatch jump out at me.

1) The former Bishop Lynch seems to be enjoying a meteoric rise through the upper echelons of the Catholic Church. How long until it's Pope Paddy and for that matter, how hasn't there been one yet?

2) Just a few short weeks ago a Lynch ton would have been worthy of some comment. They seem to be ten a penny nowadays. Puts Bonfield's career best of 444no (also scored down under) into some sort of context.

3) Good to see C.A. is taking the 'Cross ethos' around the world displaying an absolutely typical Crossers availability. Can you play next week? Er no, I'm in Malawi. Pff.

Cross Scramble into Activcity Semi

Activcity Quarter Final, Arboretum, 14th August

Murrayfield DAFS 119-7 (Sam Fergusson c30)
Holy Cross 119-6 (Owais Mazher c60, Charlie Ellis c30; Bharat Nussum 3 wkts)

Good game. HX scrambled a bye to the keeper off the last ball to tie the scores and win by losing one less wicket.

Cross squeaked through to the Activcity finals day (Sunday August 26th at Myreside/Craiglockhart) in an excellent game versus MDafs - adding to a long list of epic HX vs MDafs contests since THAT game in 2004.

A generally solid bowling performance with Andy K (plenty movement!) and Shannon's spells the pick and cje's the lowlight. Unusually we displayed some good fielding; especially from an unprecedentedly mobile cover field (Nawaz, Tom and Andrew R). We kept MDafs to 119: rather more than seemed likely at the 10 over mark - some good hitting from Fergusson helping their cause.

With a recently cut outfield and a decent pitch, 119 ought to have been more easily reached. But a slightly slow start put us behind the rate before some fine striking from Owais and steady play from cje seemed to have put HX in control.

But when cje and Owais were dismissed, the gloom descended further, the MDafs bowling tightened-up (Akerkar and Bharat) and we found ourselves struggling to pick up runs with any consistency (too many dot balls).

Some vital late boundaries from Jon and Shannon and energetic running from Tambo put things back in our favour before a late flurry of wickets made MDafs the favourites. With 2 balls remaining we needed 2 for the win and 1 for a tie but a swing and a miss meant that we had to rely on a scrambled bye to the keeper (would it have been a run if the keeper had hit? McGill said it would have required the 3rd umpire...).

Anyway, it all seems to suggest that Gary's long-distance running training has finally paid off..

This was exactly the scenario when we LOST the final last year. Indeed it will be Marchmont we play in the Semi-final (at Myreside).