It may well have been proven that I can organise a piss up in a brewery but it is definitely not proven that I can raise or motivate a Fantasian side to beat Palmers Brewery at cricket. To make matters worse we ended up paying for their beer at The Square & Compass.

The truth is that Palmers are a very handy side and whilst we had a very strong team of Dorset Fantasians there was no disguising that our own ale doesn’t travel or age so well. The artificial strip played well and was scarcely noticed when the wonderful views to the Isle of Wight were there to distract you.

However when we batted first timing the ball did not come easily to us and we struggled to get any good rhythm or prolonged partnerships going until the wiser heads of Andrew Hussey and Richard Arundell pushed us along at the end against some very seasoned T20 campaigners. In reply there was some excellent bowling from Mike Chattey who broke their captains bails as well as spirit, unusual dedication from Andrew Younger who was playing on his wedding anniversary but a couple of overs got away from us. Their experience of the format, some 15 or 20 T20 games each season, made it difficult for us. Apart from Mike Chattey’s debut Tim Evans showed us some very un Fantasian excellence in the field. They are two cricketers that should appear on every match managers radar.

I think we managed to drink our way back into the fixture and we shall try to play next year at Winfrith being a more central point to play

Charles O’Reilly

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