The Club Cricket Conference Yearbook 2020

- 75 - Another puzzling feature of his leadership was the delay in implementing his decisions. For example, when Dominic Raab pointed out that he could take the new ball before lunch he said “OK we will take it just after tea”. This left everyone baffled as to why he wouldn’t take advantage of it during the intervening period. He had always, previously, enjoyed mouthing off in public but found that this was continually getting him into hot water. When asked when the second and third elevens could start their matches he said they couldn’t because they hadn’t got any new balls but then a week later had to let them get on with it. The press were unkind enough to remind him of previous failed strategies such as Herd Immunity and the rarely spoken of Track and Trace. He said that the Track & Trace was working well even though it didn’t seem to be cutting off many boundaries. Regarding Herd Immunity he lamented that perhaps it wasn’t such a bad idea after all as the opposition continued to pile up the runs. Nevertheless, amidst all this gloom, the team joker, Mat Hancock, continued to keep everybody amused. In an interview about his boast of having scored over 100,000 runs he also claimed to have played in over 250 test matches. When questioned on this preposterous statement he explained that he included those he had watched on television, played on his computer and those for which his grandfather had got scorecards. Meanwhile his Best Friend continued to plot in the background arranging for dissenters to be relieved of their positions and Chris Grayling who had been promised the role of Chairman of Pavilion Security was voted out by the ingrates. Another problem was what to do about the second innings. The Panel wanted the bowlers to pitch the ball up, but the batsmen had huge bats and would keep hitting the ball out of the ground. And then just when things seemed to be settling down, Dominic Raab, who was in charge of away matches, said that if you played against teams south of the river you had to miss the next two home Games.