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Send your match reports to king@kingcricket.co.uk. If it’s a professional match, on no account mention the cricket itself. If it’s an amateur match, feel free to go into excruciating detail.
If you’ve not worked it out by now, our match report feature is not about the matches themselves; it’s about different people’s experiences of going to watch them.
It was the final of the Royal London One-Day Cup this weekend and we’ve got a full report of… what one attendee did the night before.
Sam writes:
I travelled up to London the day before the game. I say London – my base for the night was Teddington, heart of the leafy suburbs.
I spent a pleasant evening with old friends. We played Rings in a pub. I had never played Rings before, but I won all three games, finishing with an extraordinary six-ring checkout. I immediately announced my retirement from Rings.
From there it was a short walk to the local Indian restaurant. Chicken tikka masala twice (for them); vegetable biryani (for me); a side of saag aloo; three garlic naans: two pilau rice and three onion bhajis.
The portions were on the large side and we soon realised we had over-ordered.
When it came time to settle up, one of our party handed over his debit card. The waiter tapped it on his machine, looked aghast and said: ‘It’s been declined’. An awkward silence. Then the waiter again: ‘That was a joke’. A receipt was produced and he disappeared to serve another table.
We strolled home. One of our number remarked on what a mild evening it was, and how relieved he was to have come out without his coat.
We reclined in front of Newsnight. The Prime Minister had announced her resignation. At the time of writing, it is not yet clear who will replace her.
Great detail on the dinner. Doesn’t seem an inordinate order for three to me. Unless there were copious amounts of alcohol consumed before and with the meal itself, but, alas, on this point, the match report is frustratingly silent (dry?).
Although it does remind me that I have a match report myself in draft somewhere ….
Copious? No. We’re not as young as we used to be. One of us – the one who came out without a coat – had himself a pint of orange squash in the Rings pub.
I was wondering about “chicken rikka masala”. Is this a new curry dish invented by Rikki Clarke?
We’re delighted to confess that we introduced that typo at the editing stage when you’re actually supposed to be correcting such things.
Excellent match report, Sam – well deserving of promotion ahead of several of mine in the queue as yet unpublished, some dating back as far as 2014.
The best bit is the passing mention of the Prime Minister’s resignation, while you omit to mention that it was you personally who started her monumental demise by sticking the boot into her two years ago:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/31/theresa-may-clear-unfathomable-finds-deflated-newshound
For me, your late May 2017 journalism was the “Emperor’s New Clothes” moment for our vacuous Prime Minister – she was never going to be able to recover from that. Well done.
Teddington is well leafy, Sam, to the point of being well posh.
Pass agg comment of the week. Very fine.
Someone said on some social media the other day that this is a peculiar year in that the first week of June would also be the last week of May. I thought it was rather droll.
What the hell is going on with the scoring in that rings game?
World Ringboard Academy layout, Edwardian – where you been, man – the layout has changed since the Edwardian era, as explained here:
https://www.mastersofgames.com/rules/rings-rules.htm
No pass agg intended, KC, neither towards Sam nor towards Edwardian, both of whom are fine chaps.
Well, the whole thing looks very difficult to me with those tiny hooks, so I don’t blame Sam at all for retiring at the top of his game and achieving karmic ring peace.
And there was me thinking that “karmic ring peace” is that sense of relief at the end of a dose of the wild shits, when it dawns on you that you haven’t shat for a couple of hours.
You’re very good at this.