Short pitch: We’ll have a bat

For the second time in two years, club cricket from the Wirral-Cheshire area has thrust its way into the early season headlines. In April 2014, Wirral CC were bowled out for 3, with ten batsmen out for ducks. One year on, and it’s the turn of Caldy CC to gain unfortunate prominence. Caldy lost a 45 over match by exactly 500 runs, with  the opponents’ batsman, Liam Livingstone (Nantwich and Lancashire), the real news-maker scoring a reported world record one day score of 350. 

Scanning the scorecard of today’s match, the eye rests quickly on Livingstone – 34 fours, 24 sixes – it travels to the bowling analyses – economy rates ranging from 9.7 to 17 – and then searches for one important detail. The toss. Did Caldy bring this tumult on themselves? Did they pass up the chance for a good thrashing by choosing what might have been cricketing extinction?

Caldy’s captain, it turns out, called incorrectly. Very little went right for him all day, but at least he doesn’t have to chide himself for bringing on his team this flood of runs, this paralysing margin of victory. 

One other thought: as his team got ready to bat, 580 their target, at nearly 13 runs per over, did he impress upon his teammates that they should, “just play their normal game”?