Bibendum versus Fuller's - The Rematch

If it's late May, sure as the sun's not shining, it must be time for the Annual Cricket Match against Fuller's. All those not interested in cricket, look away now...

Yesterday evening saw the 2006 Bibendum v Fullers cricket game. There was a slightly different feel to this year's fixture as Bibendum suddenly found ourselves as favourites. After last year's run fest the Bibendum XI were feeling pretty punchy, and just in case we weren’t cocksure enough we made Sam Thackeray captain. And just in case he wasn’t cocksure enough, he won the toss. We were batting.

Not a problem I thought, considering the sun was out and batting is supposedly what we’re best at. We opened with Julian Adcock and David Cox; the latter got a magnificent 40 last year, this year he was out for 2. No-one was more disappointed than David. Still, Rupes was in next and he’s pretty good… unfortunately you have to be in it to win it and running yourself out after a pretty encouraging boundary is not the way forward. Then Sam came in and added a few runs with some nice boundaries and dogged assistance from Jules. Ants Rixon also showed signs of a decent innings before getting caught. Next in were Ed Clarke and myself and to be honest, the less said about our respective innings the better, and why bother when you can talk about the arrival of Tony Cloke. We were on about 90 odd at the time and what followed was a series of ‘power boundaries’ from the Cloke, backed up by some efficient running from James Martin and the ever athletic Marcus Rann. Tony tells me the 2 pints he had before he ran out were to sooth his aching back, personally I think he was building some ‘lager aggression’. We finished on 138, not bad.

After a quick pint and some token catching practice Rupert and Marcus opened the bowling. To great effect I might add, within 4 overs Fullers were 3 wickets down with about 10 runs on the board. The wickets continued to fall at a steady rate and apart from a brief spell of desperate slogging (ended by a superb catch from Julian at fly slip) they never really looked like getting the runs. After Rupes and Rann we had bowling from Tony, David, Ed and some great stuff at the end from James. Some praise has to go to our fielding which was awesome, great stops and catches held by all, especially James who stopped one that I reckon the rest of the team would have left well alone, it nearly took his hand off.

In the end Fullers didn’t get close and Bibendum won by a stretch. Well done all, I’m looking forward to next year when I’m betting they’ll bring in some Aussie bar staff.

My man of the match? Tony Cloke. Not only did he get those important and entertaining runs, he took a couple of wickets as well.(and he can barely walk today - Ed.)