With the introduction of live scores in the matchcentre, frogboxes and other digital ways to follow matches these days sadly post-match writings via website or even paper have disappeared. The focus on this type of fleeting clinical positivism with the registration of every ball cynically takes away the focus from the things that really matter in our game and are now making the proper history of the matches a more Celtic affair, Not written down and getting diluted as time and a massive amount of post-match beers wreak havoc on the truth. Therefore, to record the important affairs here a blast from the past: a zami 1 match report early 2000nd style to preserve the epics of Zami 1 games for posterity.

As fielding first has always been the modus operandi for our team we started out with weirdly all 11 players untroubled with the aftereffects of Friday night imbibing activities. The clear mind was detrimental to heavy scoring in the Joost-de Boer competition, there were no foggy visions and groans in the politically incorrect appeal standings while Schwalbes in the field were rarely seen in the first 10 to 12 overs as only James registered 1 point while catching and getting 0.25 points for a particularly ungraceful effort at midwicket.  Time therefore for the former captains JP and myself to stimulate the allround effort in these crucial elements of Zami and slowly but surely the scoring got a bit heavier as WiIlem ran like mad for a catch and with wonderful accuracy shelled it. Further sterling efforts then alighted as opapa had enough time to think about the ball coming towards him on the boundary and duly getting three points for putting it down. Neil was getting more vocal and went for some wonderful appeals on balls hitting the batsman in the region of the unmentionables, while Schwalbes were suddenly appearing again by most of us and summoning the wonderful upcoming summer of cricket in the process. Top notch to Rahul, opapa and Gert for standing about and letting the ball drop in between the three of them. Through all these actions we found ourselves with a total to chase of 200, making amends for the rather unsociable 92 for 6 we had the opponent on after 24 overs.

Batting in Zami these days is somewhat different in comparison to the early days of our team, when the duck pond was rather crowded on most occasions and being 25/5 after 7 overs was par for the course. To honour those who came before Ed took one for the team and failed to trouble the scorers. But only three scores in single figures out of 8 players batting is a worrying sign that old team traditions are slowly going down the drain. Even the Jos Brink six seems to have disappeared.

I can fully understand that quite a few of you are reading the report above and find yourselves utterly confused. Here a legenda:

Schwalbe: unnecessary dive towards the ball in a mostly vain effort to stop it. Extra points if you dive over and you see the ball reaching the boundary. Does not matter if it’s an African or a European Schwalbe.

Same as in soccer matches where any match not reaching at least a 100 Schwalbes is deemed void. Team legends are Boetz, JP and Wolfy

The politically incorrect appeal: Ball hits pad way above knee. You are at deep square. You scream your head off in an attempt to raise the umpire’s finger. Used to have another name in earlier days but that was deemed politically incorrect. Utter team legend: Frits Hogen Esch, followed by Boetz.

Ducks: you all did it and we had a zami t-shirt for it that got lost. Legend: Gouwe (Dutch nickname for golden).

Jos Brink 6: you make the effort to hit a 6 and the ball clears the rope by 3 inches.

Joost de Boer: absolute team and club legend. Played 2 matches in his whole cricket career. Any ball hit or thrown in his direction was followed by a thud of cricket ball hitting bony body parts. When thud was not heard he was in serious trouble. Has never ever caught a cricket ball. Since then, any dropped catch in our team is followed by at least one player shouting: Joost de Boer.

League points today:

Ducks: Ed 1 point

Schwalbes: Willem 3 points, opapa 1 point, James 1.25 points, Wolfy 1 point, Rahul 1 point, Neil 1 point, Derk 1 point

The politically incorrect appeal:

Neil 3 points, opapa 1 point, Willem 1 point, Ross 1 point, Gert 1 point, James 1 point.

Joost de Boer: opapa 4, Neil 1, Rahul 2, Gert 2, Derk 1, Willem 1, JP 1

Wolfy