As a lowly Apprentice me and a couple of the other Apprentices were brought into the Final of our large factories Annual Interdepartmental Cricket contest.
Normally this Annual Contest was practically a walkover for the Spinning Department as they had almost a full team of players of Asian origin hence were by far much superior cricketers.
Our team of Engineers batted first in the limited overs competition and thanks to our star batsman we achieved a very respectable score. I was tail end Charley, on in the last over with four balls left, I managed a two on the first ball and a single on the next, the other batsman managed to get a four off the next ball and he threw the bat at the last ball, we ran an easy one but made the turn to try and sneak a second, we failed and I was run out for the grand score of three.
It was there turn to bat and the runs were mounting, they were homing in on our score, then our Captain said to us three Apprentices, can either of you motley lot bowl? We have reached our allotted overs per bowler with our star guys, OK I will give it a go I said.
So I faced this smug looking batsman, I could see it on his face “easy meat, bring it on”. Which is precisely what I did, pitched it just off line with as much spin as I could muster, he took a swing at it and missed and our Wicket Keeper caught the ball and very nearly stumped him.
Next ball, something different, a full toss, he took a swing at it and missed and the ball hit the centre wicket about 6” off the ground, OUT.
Next batsman entered the arena with a swagger, carefully lined up his bat on centre/off and he waited for me to bowl my third ball of the over to him. I took a long run up and bowled as fast as I could with as much backspin as I could muster. The ball pitched short of the crease and rapidly slowed causing the batsman to sky the ball which was well caught, OUT.
So it was now three balls bowled, two wickets and zero runs off my bowling and I was on for a Hat-trick.
Next guy walked in but with not much of a swagger, he took up the stance and I let fly with another spin ball which he blocked, he did the same for my last two balls so I finished the over with 2 wickets for 0 runs.
Now it was the last over and the Spinning Dept were 4 runs short of a victory. It was the last over and our bowler let it fly but the batsman made good contact and the ball flew towards the boundary for a well hit six. I do not know what happened, it was instinct, I just jumped as high as I could and stuck out my hand and stopped the ball, goodness that hurt, I thought I had broken fingers. Quickly I gathered up the ball and hurled it towards our Wicket Keeper who caught it and hence we limited it to them scoring one run.
We managed to hold on and won the match by two runs.
It was my one and only sporting victory where I received a Trophy.
I was normally cr4p at Cricket, guess I had a good day.