I Do Declare � Middlesex v Glamorgan Day 3

Not So Hot Today

By Hippity the Green Bunny
April 24 2009

Hippity the Green Bunny has managed to smuggle his way in and out of Lord's to provide us with this excellent match report. Despite the fact that he is green and has beans where his brains are supposed to be, Hippity provides us with superb, albeit quirky, details. Many thanks to the little green monster.

To tell you the truth, I was pretty hacked off Wednesday and Thursday.  Middlesex were playing at Lord’s in glorious sunshine and I was stuck in bed following the game on Ceefax.  Home alone!  Home alone!! Home alone!!!

Home alone with Ceefax

I knew that daddy had planned a trip to Lord’s Friday with his business partner, Uncail Micheál, so I devised a cunning plan.  I’d jump into daddy’s picnic bag while he wasn’t looking and cadge a ride to HQ.  It’s a bumpy ride – daddy uses Shanks’s Pony.  I hadn’t worked out how I’d get home, but I knew I’d find a way.

I was desperate to see Phil Hughes bat and was praying that he wouldn’t get out before the end of Day 2.  I was so excited when that little Ceefax flag came up saying “stumps” with Hughes not out 100* overnight.  Daddy was excited too – he told Uncail Micheál to be on time for the start of play to make sure they’d see the young man bat.

Daddy and I arrived in good time and my luck was in – daddy was paged by Uncail Micheál soon after we arrived, so I could climb out of the bag and secrete myself there on the middle tier of the pavilion out of daddy’s sight.   The new floodlights look wonderful.

Bunny's eye view from Mound 

To be honest, Dexter got off to a better start than Hughes, although the boy wonder did play a couple of dreamy shots including a straight drive as good as you might see all season.  Daddy remarked that he was surprised that Kruger hadn’t opened the bowling.  Soon after daddy opened his big fat mouth Kruger was brought on and the boy wonder had played on for only 18 more runs.  Drat.  And not long after that Dexter fell, a juggled catch by Powell at slip, also off Kruger.    Why couldn’t daddy have kept his mouth shut?

Yet daddy seemed unfazed by all this and expounded on his theory that Middlesex should bat with great purpose aiming for the 5 batting points as quickly as possible but then perhaps even declaring.  He then explained the theory of declaring behind in enormous detail to Uncail Micheál.  In return, Uncail Micheál, who has a Masters Degree …. in science! explained how the cooler air of the afternoon would react with the particular soil and grass at Lord’s to speed up the wicket and swing the ball, thus making daddy’s plan to declare behind extremely cunning.  It sounded like bunkum to me, but people sitting around daddy and Uncail Micheál started to say “oooh” and “aaahhh” and then they all moved away, presumably to go tell their friends.

Meanwhile Eoin Morgan (he’s my hero, you know) looked in supreme form (he hit a dreamy straight drive that was as good as the Hughes one) until he fell LBW to Harrison.  I was disconsolate, but I couldn’t yell out in case daddy realised I was around.  Soon it was lunch.  Daddy and Uncail Micheál were sad to learn that perambulation was prohibited, so they wandered off the long way round to get themselves a deli lunch.

I decided to ignore the perambulation ban and go out onto the field to play tag with Uncle Mick Hunt and the boys, as I so often do.  I did try burrowing under the square this winter to spice up the pitch a bit, but Uncle Mick put paid to all of my best laid plans, as usual.  I wandered around the Mound side but soon went back to the Pavilion.

Soon after lunch, Ben Scott fell to that man Kruger.  And soon after that so did Gareth Berg; in fact he was dropped at slip earlier in the over but repeated the same shot a couple of balls later with a similar result and was held the next time.  

Dawid Malan was going really well.  Shaggy looked really good with the bat again this season, but was then given out LBW after what seemed like an age.  Shaggy stared down the umpire for an even longer age before trudging off.

I wondered where daddy and Uncail Micheál had got to, as they normally wander back to the Pavilion side fairly soon after eating their lunch.  I think I spotted them in the Mound Stand, probably jabbering away about business and all sorts of high-falutin’ talk about finance and science that I don’t understand.

Soon they came back round to the Pavilion and I needed to resume my hide-and-seek with them. It was around that time that I heard a commotion on the pitch.  I realised that Malan was out and I’d missed the ball completely (oh no!).  It says “caught Cosgrove, bowled Harrison” on the scorecard and that’s all I can tell you about it.  But if Cosgrove’s fielding earlier was anything to go by, Malan must have hit the ball straight to him.

Still, the 5^th batting point was in the bag, although the scoreboard was stubbornly only crediting Middlesex with 6 rather than the 7 bonus points it had earned.  And boy did daddy go on about that.  Then, as soon as there were exactly 40 overs left in the day, Middlesex declared, making tea and the declaration merge and fulfilling daddy’s “declare behind” theory.  And boy did daddy go on about that part too.

One of daddy’s friends came by and argued vociferously that the game was destined to be a draw and that Middlesex didn’t have a chance but that now Glamorgan did have a chance and that Shaggy had got this declaration business wrong.  But daddy was adamant about his theory.  Uncail Micheál started to expound his scientific theory about colder evening air and the particular species of grass, soil, faster pitch, etc - but this friend (like those others earlier in the day) disappeared rapidly at this point.  He must have had an appointment to get to.

Meanwhile Middlesex were taking wickets.  Murtagh was anyway.  Getting some swing he was.  Cosgrove got out hoicking the ball to Berg in the deep.  Then Rees was done LBW by the swing.  Could have been more wickets, that spell.  Richardson again bowled well.

Evans and Berg bowled better than reports of their first innings suggest; Berg was rewarded when Wright played him on.

Then late in the day Richardson returned and had Powell trapped LBW (Daddy said he thought it looked a little high but that Richardson deserved some luck) but the very next ball had the night-watchman Shantry dropped by the boy wonder at slip.  Shantry nearly fell to Hughes again before stumps, the ball just not carrying off Shaggy.

By this time, Uncail Micheál had gone home, but not before bumping into a friend of his, who was now drinking beer and talking to daddy.  I spotted my chance to jump back into the picnic bag for a ride home.  On the bumpy ride home, I was trying to work out how to get use of the computer (which I am not normally allowed) to write up this report for you.  But I needn’t have worried.  Daddy was drunk as a skunk and has passed out on the bed as usual.  And if he thinks a nine-year-old green bunny can’t break his passwords and get into his computer, he’s wrong!  wrong!  wrong!!!

Thank you for reading this.

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