29th May 2021
Friendly: MCC 
VS Cricket Club Bayern
In what was the first game against opposition for the Munich CC against Cricket Club Bayern at the Hirsch the English Garden turned on a great day, with the sun shining upon the Flickx we were all set to enjoy ourselves in the friendly blooding countless debutants to the MCC ranks.
The positives vibes of what the day could have been quickly went south when our Covid Chief was lost somewhere on public transport.
And the lawnmower shit itself.
“How to Cut Grass” by Lon Moore
And we turned around to see the opposition doing countless cap presentations and an overly serious warmup inclusive of run though sprints. The context of playing in a ‘friendly’ marginally improved to see four crates of beer in the fridge.
The skipper, Owen Davies lost the toss as usual and we found ourselves in the field to start the match. Ring-ins Billy Mirtschin and Jamie English opened the innings with countless extras with the occasional ball hitting the Flickx. Owen was doing it all, catches run outs keeping the side in it as the bowlers made Vinny PV behind the stumps work hard for 46 extras throughout the innings. Dismal catching and bowling down legside saw CCB amass 213 runs. With highlights from the fielding innings as follows:
– Ayushman Chakrabarti on debut with 4 wickets (should have been 5 or more)
– Thomas Pryke with his first wicket at the club- Vinny working tirelessly behind the stumps
– Jonty Altmann bowling 8 straight without an extra
– Veith Gattinger and Altmann combining in the slips to snaffle a catch.
When it was time for MCC to bat, the beers were well and truly flowing with a large target of 216 to chase. Little would we know that Simrat Pal Singh Khangura would be on his third or fourth beer this time and called an impressive 72 extras throughout the innings giving the MCC every chance to finding a win. Vinny and Ruhel Ahmad started the innings off well putting the bad ball away and running hard for every run, even when the ball had crossed the boundary line and could be found near the tram tracks. No one in the top order could get anything more than a start until David Llewellyn and Owen Davies came in and steadied the ship top scoring with 17 and 21* respectively. Recruit Jamie English proved he was wasted down the order having some genuine ability to play the game, however wearing whites again instead of the colours may see him financially penalized by the club rather than promoted up the batting order. With a number of balls to go in the innings youngster Thomas Pryke come in and smacked his first run of his MCC career topping off a great day that saw him awarded player of the match. Some highlights from the batting innings included:
– Llewellyn, Davies and English scoring runs freely towards the back end of the innings
– Thomas Pryke scoring his first runs for the club
– No one running themselves out, which was the opposite story in the CCB innings
– The Czech beer doing a number on Wembo as he roared abuse from the sidelines
Player of the match: Thomas Pryke
Big thanks to Simrat and Amol for umpiring throughout the day.
Billy Mirtschin
