On arrival at the Ground it was immediately evident that a proper game was not possible and that the match would be decided with a bowl out. With Horspath’s record in bowl outs being identical to England’s in penalty shoot outs this was not good news. Captain for the night Mossy had the difficult job of having to select 5 bowlers from the side to each bowl twice at the stumps.
After strangely overlooking Bag Rag Nathan who even if he had missed the stumps would have at least appealed, he elected to go with Mase, Jehan, Hendo, Shahbaz and Himself.
Shipton went first and bookies favourite Sean Miller immediately struck. Then a very tall bloke hit twice. The umpires then attempted to add a touch of controversy. With the bowler having knocked down the wicket at the bowlers end in the delivery stride, it was obviously construed by the umpire as an attempt to run out the non – striking batsman [there wasn’t one] and a dead ball was called. The umpires [Geoff Hawkins and Bob Perkins] then had a conflab and reversed the decision. With the rest of Shipton's bowlers registering blobs Horspath were left with a target to better 3.
Previous experience told us that was far too high. Although the Horspath bowlers, according to them, produced unplayable deliveries, they failed to disturb the bails until Shab made the scoreline respectable by showing them how it should be done, with his two balls striking the base of the stumps.