Beach cricket was on the schedule for Pattaya CC last month at the annual Koh Chang Beach Cricket Tournament, held on the magnificent beach of the Royal Siam Resort. Ten teams from all over Thailand met in two groups of five to ascertain the finalists of the Cup, Plate, Spoon, Double Toothpick and Toothpick finals.
Pattaya CC divided the squad of 12 players equally and called themselves unimaginatively Pattaya A and Pattaya B. Pattaya A, captained by Simon Philbrook, proved the more consistent of the two teams as they won three of the four group games to finish runners up, whilst Pattaya B, captained by the increasingly impressive Peter Gangur, maintained a consistent losing streak until their final group match which they won convincingly, but still they finished bottom of the group.
Obviously buoyed by their recent group triumph, Pattaya B took to the beach full of confidence in the Toothpick Final against a surprisingly enthusiastic Koh Chang side. Batting first and realising getting out (losing 5 runs each time) was not advisable, the boys knuckled down to grind out a score on a slow outfield baked by the scorching Sunday afternoon sun. As the A team cheered their fellow club members on from the boundary edge infinity pool, the B team finished with a flurry of runs, mainly consisting of wides but no one cared as they posted a tournament highest score of 67 runs.
Salman, Dave ‘Stig’ Samways, Hamza and Peter kept the opposing batsmen in check but the innings changing over came from the master of beach cricket himself, Bobby ‘Slow Poison’ Young. His left arm combination of sinkers and floaters were simply too much for the local team who capitulated under the master’s influence and they finished 19 runs short of their target. The Toothpick was going back in the minibus to Pattaya!
Pattaya A dried themselves off and faced an ultra competitive British Club team in the Plate Final. Bowling the first over and still with wrinkly hands ‘Fes’ (fastest on the Eastern Seaboard, for his age) Lees, with a new ‘1,2,3,4 and cock the wrist’ bowling routine discovered inexplicably in the non- existent nets by the side of the ground, where he got burnt to a crisp, amazingly got it more right than wrong. Rather than conceding an inordinate number of runs in his first over he managed to reduce the opposition to minus 1 run. Yes it’s beach cricket!
Backed up by the ever present Chris Waddington, who had overheard Fes explaining his new routine that included the ‘dier’ (a delivery that just dies at the batsman’s feet and cannot be hit off the square) which he used it to great effect, Nine Finger Nate, Usman and blue wigged Richard Holt, Pattaya A only needed 27 runs for victory. Now, whether alcohol played a part is debatable, but the Pattaya A batsmen were incapable of hitting the ball off the wicket let alone the square. The nail in the coffin was when Usman stood on his stumps…. well, enough said. In fact, the only thing that was said came from the captain, “back in the pool lads, whose round is it?”
