Wow, what a game! (But, oops, forgot Robin)

cricket 'n clouds
Originally uploaded by athens2004blog.

Hey up folks

So, as you'll see from the picture, I forgot to take Robin to the cricket match last night - and he missed a classic!

As today's Guardian newspaper put it, 'the venerable old Oval had never seen anything like it'. To cut a long story short, it was a 20 over (120 ball/pitch) match - which was interupted by rain, so Warwickshire, the away team, only got to face 90 balls, whereas Surrey, the home team, had faced all 120. Surrey had scored 149 runs from theie 120 bowls, so it was worked out that Warwickshire had to score 118 from their 90.

In the end, after much drama, they score 117. The Surrey players celebrated, thinking this meant they'd won. But, after 30 minutes, it turned out they hadn't - it was a tie.

Because this was a knock-out cup match, that meant they had to resort to a bowl-out, the first in the history of the competition (like a penalty shoot out in soccer)! That meant five bowlers from each team got two bowls each at the wicket/stumps, without a batsman trying to stop it. After both teams had had their 10 balls, the score was 2 hits each. So it went into sudden death.

The Warwickshire bowler went first and hit the stumps. Which meant the Surrey man had to hit the stumps with one bowl or they'd lost. Amazingly, he hit it. Then the Warwickshire man missed, which meant the Surrey player had to hit the wicket for the home team to win. He did and the crowd went barmy. The player who'd hit it - Tim Murtagh - went sprinting off into the field, peeled off his shirt and waved it around his head, like he'd just scored a winning goal.

I'm not sure if this communicates to those of you who know nothing about cricket, but this is an unprecedented way for a game to end. Murtagh was on TV afterwards saying hitting the winning wicket was 'definitely one of the best feelings of his entire life'.

Amazing. And a great way to celebrate a year to the day since me and my wife got engaged.
:)