Entrecasteaux retain trophy.
With the organisers of this unique festival of cricket pulling their hair out due to last minute cancellations and the like they reminded themselves to ‘Always look on the bright side of life’ and so it was that Saturday dawned, bright and peaceful with eight teams, four from England and four local teams, gathered on this picturesque ground in the heart of the Var, kindly provided by the commune of Entrecasteaux.
The teams were randomly drawn into two leagues and after a somewhat chaotic briefing battle commenced with each team in the two leagues playing the other teams in their league. There were therefore six matches per league and by 5 o’clock the winners of the two leagues were determined.
Noticeable action during the league games was shown by Crème Anglais who failed to win a match and therefore won the wooden spoon with zero points. This was without a doubt down to their aggressive consumption of liquids throughout the day and in this instance we are not talking of custard, more likely Irish coffee, but we thank them for running up such a magnificent bar bill!
Local rivals Riviera had been enjoying themselves and won 2 of their matches, Entrecasteaux’s second team had not troubled the point scorer and Gotham Village had also won 2 matches. The Stage team had forgotten their lines and could only manage one win which was no more than Cadogan Tate, who strangely found it difficult to remove anyone – from the crease.
So it was that Entrecasteaux’s first team and Beausoleil, neither of whom had been beaten, met to determine the winner of the trophy. Beausoleil batted first and Kalith attacked at every opportunity, compiling an impressive 36 runs before being bowled by Chaminda in the 5th over of the innings. He had opened with Yoges(7) who was unluckily run out. Baldev was then brilliantly caught by Bandaranayake behind the stumps off the bowling of Roshan Perera and Beausoleil’s own Roshan was in such a hurry that he charged a ball from Karunarathnage, which beat him in the flight and he was stumped. Simon Eveleigh had Kavi trapped in front of his stumps and Beausoleil’s innings closed on the useful total of 77.
Cliff Gregory, the home team’s captain, sent out his trusted opening pair of Bandaranayake and Chaminda and they did not let him down. Indeed it looked as though they might reach the target on their own until Bandaranayake was well caught by Baldev on the mid wicket boundary having scored 13. Chaminda was undeterred and continued to strike the ball to every boundary with the kind of class and authority to which we have grown accustomed. With only 2 runs required to win Roshan Perera and Glen Burrell were never going to be troubled, Roshan took a single and Burrell had much pleasure in hitting a ball through the covers which gave Entrecasteaux a 4 wicket victory and the trophy.
We then retired to the Age d’Or in the village to be given a delicious curry and listen to rather a boring speech of thanks, by the club secretary, for the many people who had made this day possible. But those thanks are sincere and genuine; all those who were thanked had worked very hard to make this a day full of fun, not only for the cricketers but also the many children, whose energy we envy, and the old and bold, whose wisdom we respect. Cricket is the beautiful game, full of such irony; when a ball is struck with a mighty blow and hurtles to the boundary only to be plucked from the air by an outstretched hand – yes that is the irony, that is the beauty.
As an aside the club had a tombola, with many superb prizes donated by club members, in order to give young Redman Everton, who is suffering from a serious lymph cancer and has just finished his chemotherapy, a present on his return home. We are pleased to report that thanks to that generosity the club will donate 650 euros to Redman.
Well done to Entrecasteaux for winning the trophy – when will they be beaten?