Bootham Park v Dringhouses June 11th 2006 at Dringhouses

Back Row: Wayne Kenny, Richard Todd, Jamie Case, Wayne McMahon, Tim Wills. Front Row: Nathan Ellison, John Patrick, Pete Mitchell, Jonny Wilkins, Kev Scully

Bootham Park (140) lost to Dringhouses (142-0) by 10 wickets

I called correctly to make it three tosses out of three this season. The pitch looked dry, true and full of runs with barely a hint of moisture underneath. I chose to bat first. Both Tim Wills and Jonny Wilkins fell cheaply to an excellent spell of left-arm bowling from Chris Storey, while John Patrick was bowled by Bibby at the other end. Kev Scully and I then consolidated the innings, putting on a useful partnership of 82 for the fourth wicket, before Scully dragged a wide ball from Sam Lingard back onto his own stumps. Immediately after notching my first fifty of the season, I played all round a straight one from Brendan Walsh and the floodgates opened. Lingard scythed through the rest of the batting, ending with 4 wickets at 7 apiece, with Cole chipping in the final wicket from the only ball he bowled.

Considering the strength of the Dringhouses team, 140 was never really going to be enough. Storey and Crowe duly proved this to be the case as they each got to fifty in depressingly quick time, Crowe retiring to allow Cole to add 17 undefeated runs to his earlier wicket.

All in all a better performance than last week's abysmal display against the Welly, but the result was still the same - a loss by the comprehensive margin of 10 wickets.

Crockwatch part 1: Bruise News

My first contribution to the season's injury list is this little beauty, courtesy of a mis-fielded on drive in the game against the Welly. I'm not convinced the picture really does it justice, in certain lights it looks just like Jupiter's red spot, only hairier.

Unlucky Al Cocker popped up on the crockwatch radar this week with a cameo appearance at the Retreat. He is currently nursing a shoulder injury which prevents him throwing the ball straight up in the air. Luckily, he managed almost half an hour in the presence of cricket balls without any of them hitting him on the head. He was last seen heading off in the direction of Heslington Road, presumably to get run over by a bus.

Bootham Park v Wellington 4th June 2006 at The Retreat

Back Row:Wayne Kenny, John Patrick, Pete Mitchell, Richard Todd, Wayne McMahon. Front Row: Nathan Ellison, Jonny Wilkins, Kev Scully, Will Outhart.

Bootham Park (35) lost to Welllington (39-0) by 10 wickets

I guess one of the reasons we carry on playing this frankly ludicrous game is its constant ability to confound expectations. Coming into this game on the back of a 179-run victory, you might have expected us to put together an imposing total. You'd have been wrong.

It didn't help that two players dropped out late on the morning of the game, but neither does it excuse the way we batted. Through a heady combination of accurate bowling and piss-poor batting, we collapsed to an unseemly 35 all out. Virtually alone in a raft of ducks, Wayne Kenny carved out 10 useful runs through the off side before exposing his stumps once too often to Baldock's brisk medium pace. I contributed a less-than-fluent 12 before gifting John Galloway yet another stumping. Apart from that and the obligatory comic runout, all the wickets were either bowled or lbw.

With that sort of total, we never really had a chance with the ball as Steve Relf and Danny Sampson knocked off the runs.

Undetererred, we challenged them to a second game. We lost that too.

There was one ray of sunshine in Jonny Wilkins's brillliant 41 from 28 balls, but on the whole it was a pretty grim day for us. The solitary, microscopic crumb of comfort sustaining me is that every season seems to have its hopeless nadir and it's as well to get it out of the way early.

Last year it was even worse...