The first of the season timed game in the MEIL league - on arrival in Chigwell, although the ground looked lovely, the weather didn’t look promising. 

After Ed ‘The Hit Man’ Hart’s report of walking down a dual-carriage for 20 minutes, avoiding being splashed by passing traffic, created murmurs of the trip to the ground being in vain.

With the weather easing, the captains headed out to the middle. In true Pacific fashion, the toss was lost and we were put in to bowl. With ‘The Hit Man’ and Tom Gane opening the bowling, the sun decided to pop out from behind the clouds. Now this was proper cricket weather! Sadly Pacific were unable to make the breakthrough, the opening pair were able to build a partnership of 103. But at drinks, the run rate was around 4 an over, and all our bowling was fairly tidy. Then the breakthrough came with James Soden getting the wicket - caught by JR, returning after a 4 year absence playing for Pacific. 

Although there was a strong partnership, the run rate was quite slow, so Chigwell decided to send their big hitter in, Hannant. A couple of Pacific’s players recognised Hannant from the year before, knowing that his style is Gung-ho and Gung-ho was the way it went. But with the captain Tim Garrett bowling, the moment of the match occured as the big hitter smashed one high into the air, with Tom Gane running round on the boundary and taking a wonderful catch.

Sadly these are the only two wickets I can remember as these are the only two wickets that happened. 

With their opener Vas, upon reaching his 100 (which was a good knock to watch) deciding to retire himself for reasons unknown, to me at least. Chigwell got themselves to 229-2. Then the heavens opened up again with the rain coming down heavily, sadly this wouldn’t stop until the end of the match.

But the fearless Jas and Toby headed out. Jas as is his norm now, was attacking. Hitting 4 and 6s, all flew off his strong leg side striking. I promised Jas not to mention his second ball, a miss hit that went straight up in the air and luckily landing just between two fielders, one of them being Rayn (who I had heard was nursing a vodka hangover after being picked up by his dad early from the party. Many of us will know how that feels). Sadly as the weather worsened, so did our innings. At 5.30pm, the 20 overs remaining mark, we were at 104-2 with 126 further runs required to win, with Toby and Tom game at the crease. But the fall of some quick wickets hampered our chances. The rain was getting heaver. We were playing for the draw before long with Tim and Ed seeing us over line.  

The Joy of the Draw. We played for 7 hours and both teams were drenched to the bone. A game of cricket was played and the honest assessment is that some of us had fun, whereas other may not have.

Report by Joe Deighan