Vs Stella Select, @ Hampset CC, 3rd July 2025
Stella away games hold a special place in some Sloth hearts. Fresh usually books away games in car parks, schools or random fields. So to visit a proper, functioning cricket club with a working bar is a special treat.
The village adage was applied at the toss, “we have less players here than you so we should bat first”. Expert tactics from captain Fresh, knowing that this Sloth line up was a bowling powerhouse.
Sloths inserted, they peppered the preposterously short boundary, pouncing on anything short of a length to mercilessly hit the boundary netting willy-nilly. Laurie expertly swung and missed for an entire over, to lure in a false sense of security for the Stella attack, before then unleashing the hounds of hell in the next over. Matt Can’t-Bat Cox once again demonstrated his lack of batting by losing two balls, one in a hedge over the longest boundary and one over the 30 foot boundary netting into an Odd Down garden or somewhere down the hill at Dunkerton. It was an onslaught. A battering. Multiple Ben Ducketts in disguise. Whispers on the boundary spoke of a possible record. Loose lips muttered “could this be a 200 score?”. HA HA laughed Mother Cricket upon hearing such tomfoolery and, thus, Sloth wickets fell at once. Fresh played on, Jimmer looped to long-off, Stumpchat fluffed a leading edge to mid-off, The Gas Man was run out Johnny-Bairstowing-at-Lords-2023 and it took some late bashing by Ish and nurdling by Porridge to set the imposing target of 175 for a Stella victory on a dustbowl of a wicket.
Stellas lined up to tackle this mountain with a reversed batting order and were faced with the oncoming storm of Fahim and Quayom. Bowling a meaty full length, poles were taken and forward, defensive prods fully tested. HRP, Ish and Matt Can’t Bat continued this oppression, forcing Stellas to play across the line and then hear their stumps explode behind them in a cloud of splinters and sadness. Feeling the relief of some spin, Stella looked to score against Jimmer who then ragged one out of the dust to clatter the stumps. Resplendent in a new mid-week kit, Stellas looked like suped-up tuna marines that kept appearing at the wicket, to then immediately be darting back upstream to the safe pond of the pavilion. Lawrie proved too much, his left arm delivery from straight-out of the setting sun unnerved batters and, with two batters clean bowled in-a-row, he set up a hat-trick chance. 3 slips then lined up and immediately panicked as the delivery was sent down outside off. The wise-head at the crease left alone and regular Sloth service continued. As Sloth skip Fresh delicately described it “Porridge, you’re bowling from this end with the weak, shit and old Sloths” while at the other end, out of the amber setting sun flew the sprightly Sloths to demolish Stella souls.
As the target disappeared into the distance, HRP, returning for his third spell, took the final wicket and thus a comprehensive Sloth victory was secured in the dying embers of a mid-summer evening.
Over pork scratchings and actual non-cool-box-pints Sloths conversed about meaningful current events, such as: is padel better than tennis? Do we need pectoral muscles, really? Should we just continue to pay for remedial sports massages or actually stretch and warm up properly? Naaaaa another Thatchers for me please, I’ll stretch down when I’m dead.