Bunbury Cup...

It was M's birthday yesterday and if he could dream up the perfect day he would have dreamt up the kind of day we had. Blue skies and sunshine, a road trip to Warwick, good food and cricket (and preferably a win).

J travelled with the school yesterday which meant we could set off with our cricket picnic, flasks and chairs and stop off on the way. We ended up stopping in Warwick itself and had a cream tea in a cafe that went back to 1571. I would normally watch M eat his cream tea but they had gluten free scones!

When we arrived at Warwick School we had to work out which of the six cricket pitches they were playing on. It was certainly a contrast to the badly mown pitch at J's school. Since it was the Bunbury Cup, a national competition, they played on the main pitch which has a huge clubhouse with glass railed balcony. This is where M and I pitched for the day. A proper table and chairs and for the most part we had it to ourselves. Only one other parent had travelled to see the match.

It was all rather civilised with uniformed boys travelling from lesson to lesson and dawdling around the cricket boundary to see what was happening. The electronic scoreboard could probably be seen miles away. I wish I had taken more photographs. It was as much as we could do to take it all in, and once the match started I didn't want to miss anything.

Jake opened the bowling and also bowled two overs at the end. He bowled six overs altogether and got two wickets for only 9 runs. He was a bit disappointed to be batting at five, especially as his track record for batting this year at club level has been first class. He has retired in most matches and for the rest he's got runs and been 'not out'. Unfortunately the school masters don't always have this information. So he went in with only 3 and a half overs left but still managed to hit 18 runs off 8 balls. Some of the huge hits he did over everyone's heads really deserved to be fours but the boundary was huge. The main thing was that he enjoyed himself.

It got really close at the end. They had 136 runs to chase, and after a disastrous over which gave away 18 runs they were catching up. The last ball needed to be a six to win but by then we had clearly bowled all the good batsmen out and although he had a huge swipe he didn't make contact with the ball. Phew! The next round is the quarter finals, which apparently is the furthest we've ever got.

It was a scorching hot day and there was no shade, I really wish I'd packed my sun hat. We got a little sunburnt. J has an under 17s match tonight so I imagine he will look a little lanky up against them. At 13 he hasn't really muscled out yet. On Saturday we have another men's match. He's got a wicket for them every match so far so they love him. On Sunday we have the first county match of the season. See what I mean about needing a tour bus?