“Bollocks Inspector’s Report”

Match: 09 / 189

Lost by 99 runs

Team	Total
R. T. Harris	175 - 5
J. Hoskins 3 - 27
FFTMCC	76
S. Dobner 18

As a dour, sceptical world-weary inspector of all things bollocks, imagine my ears prick up at the mention of a nonsensical game of cricket being played just down the road. It is a rare and gratifying experience to combine the only two meaningful pursuits worth gravitating off my sofa for; and sure – was I not disappointed in all this bollocks.

Given the windswept, wastelands of Holton had long since been given up to footballing chavs and feral dogs to shit on, I was initially aghast to hear a game of cricket was actually being played. But here were two Sunday T20 protagonists on a narrow, threadbare strip of plastic that would not have looked out of place at Grange Hill.

On inspection the teams seemed as enthusiastic as a fox crossing the A34 at during rush hour. It was grey and foreboding, with diagonal drizzle giving way to a withering blanket of rain which soaked in your hair and ran down the course of your back. I laughed as the attire of the bowling team quickly became discoloured by the sodden red ball. The red smudges on their kit suggesting they were butchers as opposed to cricketers. Haha – what absurd bollocks.

This remote Oxfordshire ground had no boundary markers as such, so the players had to screw their eyesight to try and spot a worn line in the thickets of long grass and early autumnal leaves. Even if they did spot a line, the chances were it belonged to one of the football pitches that now owned the land. What farcical bollocks.

Hell is less depressing than Holton.

There was no tea to mention either, no lines of egg and mayonnaise sandwiches at half-time, no cakes baked by the mother of one of the players, and no clatter of cups and saucers. One of the teams was fasting due to Ramadan, and the other team couldn’t be arsed to sort their own food out. So, they both just sat there sipping Tesco Value orange juice out of plastic cups at the break, staring out from the dark, gloomy confines of one of the ground’s adjoining huts, a bleak reminder of what concentration camps looked like in WWII. Absolute bollocks.

MAD players laughing at the sheer bollocks of it all.

It goes without saying that the match was a pitiful and tedious affair. The team who had recently toured looked like they had left their soul in Lincolnshire, as they batted like they were holding white sticks. Despite winning easily, the other lot were as miserable as sin – probably because they were so fucking hungry.

It was all bollocks, utter cricketing bollocks. So, I left the place, a smile etched across my face until Monday.

‘The Bollocks Inspector’