The Bashers are coming!
I am the wicket keeper for a champion cricket team. There’s something I never thought I would say. The Nanjing Nong Min (Chinese for “Farmer”) won the Rural Sixes tournament, beating two Shanghai teams and two Nanjing teams.
Now, I understand that most of you don’t know Cricket. My friends have been trying to teach me about this game for the last two years, but it didn’t really click until we started playing. I lament the fact we waited this long to start playing. But let me take a step back and see if I can’t portray the significance of a rag tag group who trained for less than a month beating teams who play weekly matches in a league.
Sometime around the end of May, we heard that Hamish (a New Zealander that plays Cricket in Shanghai) wanted to put together a tournament here in Nanjing. My good friend Craig Haines heard about this, and being an avid Cricket fan, leaped at the opportunity and immediately started building a Cricket team. Craig immediately had the basis of the team in mind made up of close friends who also had an interest in Cricket, and the remaining spots were quickly filled by anyone who got wind of a cricket comp and said “Yeah, I’ll play Cricket”. I include myself in the latter group. When the roster was finished it consisted of two Australians (both named Craig), two Englishmen (both from Manchester), two Pakistanis (both incredibly good), two Americans (both who had never played Cricket), and a mild mannered ringer from India. So 9 men for a 6 man team with a vast range of talent.
We had formed the team for a bit of fun and so at our first Saturday practice we weren’t so concerned about taking stock of our skills so much as making sure everyone knew how to play the game. The major problem there was the Americans. Now as Elizabeth said, some parts can be related to baseball. So every skill Matt (the other American) and I had to offer was salvaged from past baseball experience. This was generally OK, since a lot of Cricket is catching, throwing, and fielding a similarly sized ball. Batting presented a bit of an issue since you are playing an offensive and defensive position by batting, but Matt and I were able to make the adjustment reasonably well. The major issue (for me especially) was bowling. I’ve always thrown with a bit of a chicken wing even in baseball, but when bowling in Cricket your arm must not bend more than 15 degrees (that’s pretty much straight). And so despite my Dennis Lillee moustache, I could only either throw with a straight arm or throw with a medium amount of accuracy, but not both. Our first practice was on a field where we had played Football, and lasted about 2 or 3 hours.
After we got a team organized and began training, our manager (Business Team Leader, Tony “the Business” Herbert) decided to ramp this thing up and get some sponsorship and press involved. So our senior team members started shaking down our favorite haunts for sponsorship, Tony contacted the local Chinese press, and I called a friend of mine at Map magazine (a local English/Chinese publication). We had the posters printed that the Bashers (the Shanghai team) made up. And our Captain (Capt. Haines) got to work organizing Artwork for the printing of our club shirts. (Shout outs need to go to Allison Cummins for designing our club logo, and Chris Clanton for digitizing it with his photochoppin’ skillz). By the second practice, the press had come out to take pictures and we had our official club shirts.
The Bashers descended from Shanghai convinced that they would pulverize our Nanjing teams. They even went so far as to dub it “the enormously rural Nanjing tour” and to drink heavily over the first day as they did not expect any real competition. The games were held over two days. Saturday started with the bigger matches between the all-star teams the Bashers Presidents XI and the Nanjing Salty Ducks. I was not supposed to play for this team but, due to a shortage of players, I was deployed as a backup. I played a brief four overs (the equivalent of 20 or so pitches in baseball) in the field position “square leg.” The Salty Ducks lost the thirty over match. None of the Nong Min cared much about this defeat as our focus was on the sixes competition later in the day. The Nong Min’s first game was the last game on Saturday and ended in a spectacular victory of 79-49 against the Golden Bails.
Sunday began hot and early with the Nanjing Nong Min playing the Bashers Purple Haze. It was my second day as a wicket keeper and I was so focused on my duties as such that I don’t remember much of the game except for being told that we won at the end. We were excited by our second victory as our original goal was to just not lose every game. Imagine our surprise at winning against an organized and experienced team. Our third game was against another Nanjing team, Jimmy’s Bogans Heroes. Our batting line-up started with Jason as striker and me as non-striker. I’m going to assume that everyone at least knows that in cricket you have two batsman in at a time. If not, read this first. Knowing full well that we had much better batsman in our line-up, I went in with the strategy of letting wides go and smashing everything else. Surprisingly it worked rather well, as Jason and I both carried our bats for the full five overs to win the game. This put us at the top of the standings with a 3-0 record and people started to take notice. Our last game was against the other Shanghai team, the Basher’s Inside Leg. Inside Leg seemed to be a more dominant team than the Purple Haze with more experienced players that made for stiff competition. We lost by six runs.
I’m glad we didn’t win every game in the standings, because then we might have gone into the finals with big heads. But after a loss to a Shanghai team, we considered how to approach our title shot with caution. The first game of the finals was the NIS Golden Bails v Jimmy’s Bogan’s Heroes (our two fellow Nanjing teams). During the game, our captain was told that the two Shanghai teams would combine to create a final Basher’s six to play us for the 1rst place spot. I’m not sure if this was because some of the Inside Leg players had disappeared, or if it was to give members of every team a chance to play in the final. Either way, the battle for Champions of the Nanjing Rural Sixes came down to the underdog Nanjing Nong Min vs. the best Shanghai had to offer.
The final was a riveting game! We lost the toss and had to bat first, and so sent in our two best all-rounders (Azam and Hameed). Hameed went out early for LBW and replacing him was a far too modest Aussie who we lovingly call Lynchie. Now most of the games of the weekend had had significant runs erned by wides (if you didn’t read the link about, this is when the bowler throws it either too far in front of you, or behind you and you get automatic runs for it). But Shanghai must have saved their best for last, because for the entire 5 overs they didn’t bowl a single wide. But Azam and Lynchie were on fire! Smacking almost everything that was bowled, both batsman had to retire (Azam with 31 and Lynchie with 35). Captain Craig and Jason came in virtually at the same time and picked up runs for the last few overs. I don’t remember how many, but our total score was 73 when we took the field.
The Bashers put in some serious batsman as well. After the first two overs, pits were forming in Nong Min stomachs and the Bashers runs were going up rapidly. As I said before, I had one focus for this game and that was not to let any ball get pass me (thus giving runs away) because we certainly could not afford it. The fielding players played heroically. Anything on the ground was immediately pounced on and contained to one run. By the last over, the Bashers needed 17. This feat had been accomplished several times throughout the match. Our Captain Craig had only bowled once during the entire competition, but valiantly stepped up to take the last over. With 3 balls left the Bashers needed 10. I’m going to stop for a second and explain how you get runs in Cricket. If you hit the ball over the boundary in the air, you get six runs. If the balls rolls over the boundary on the ground you get 4 runs. Short of that you have to actually run to the opposite wicket without being thrown out. So at this point these two batsman had both been hitting sixes and fours all day. So they could have easily hit 10 off of 3. Craig bowled and the batsman hit a single. 9 runs off of 2 balls. We all took a deep breath as Craig bowled straight and true and the batsman hit it straight to Jason who contained it like a wild animal. They scored one run as Jason threw the ball back to the bowler. And then it was all over. The Bashers needed 8 runs off of the last ball of the game (which is impossible) and sighs of releif circled the field. We bowled the last ball, I think the Bashers hit it and scored a few runs, but not 8. And thus, we were victorious.
My recollection probably isn’t 100% accurate, but I’m sure it’s pretty close. We proceded to congratulate our opponents for a game well played and celebrate a very unlikely victory. It was a victory for the Nong Min, a victory for Nanjing, and a victory for the game of Cricket in actually pulling off the competition. I believe there were good feelings all around. The Nong Min found their way back to our local pub (or as close as we can get to one) to relate the stories of the weekend and toast everything we could think of. I’m sure this will be one of my fondest memories of Nanjing for years to come.
So that’s how I discovered Cricket. I have lots of pictures that were taken by other people. But you can see the one’s Elizabeth took on her page, or the one’s my friends took on facebook.
Oh, and 7 days left.
