Midd handed victory as hosts concede game

Captain Martland returned to the Midd, fresh from completing Friday’s exam on Stalinism and Soviet Life and wondering what aspects of the totalitarian system could be implemented best in his role as skipper. The awarding of a jug, perhaps, to those cricketing Stakhanovites who exceeded their output quotas in scoring 50 runs or taking 5 wickets. Perhaps the creation of a cricketing collective farm, in which resources and contributions were pooled to achieve a successful points haul. In the end, he sadly concluded that Soviet dictatorship and cricket captaincy at the Midd have little in common, aside from the wearing of dark red caps. The ‘enemy’ to be overcome on Saturday was Harrow St Mary’s, at Hatch End Playing Fields, the sort of remote settlement to which Solzhenitsyn might have referred in his Gulag Archipelago. At least, that was until the opposition conceded the game on Thursday, kindly giving the 5s another ten points. For, as the Soviets would themselves have suggested, sacrifices are needed in order to achieve the ultimate goal, in their case building Communism, in ours promotion to Division 4. And all hope of cricketing escapades was not lost, with many instead able to join Comrade Pittman at Wycombe House, on a deck which sadly proved even more inhospitable and treacherous than the extremes of 1930s Russia itself.