HK Hebe Hackers CC vs HKCC Taverners Match Day 3 – Pre-Match Build-up

THE EVENT

A seemingly innocent game of social cricket, played between two of Hong Kong’s more eccentric teams on China’s Labour Day holiday, one team in the main comprising players based in and around Hebe Haven and Sai Kung in the Eastern New Territories, the other team comprising players living variously on HK island or in Kowloon. The game would be played in an afternoon, with two innings played - each comprising 35 overs bowled by each team, with batters retiring at scoring 45 runs, and with 11 wickets taken causing a premature end to that innings play

THE PROTAGONISTS

The Hebe Haven ‘Hackers’ Cricket Club – The Visitors

A committed team of amateur cricketers, drawn from the highland and lowland tribes of Clearwater Bay and Sai Kung in HK. Variously comprised of accountants, IT executive, sales professionals, personal fitness professionals, and company managers. The ‘Hackers’ take their cricket very seriously, but in the main they take all their team sports even more seriously, as it affords them a myriad of chances to get together afterwards, drink barrel-loads of beer, and generally afford each other psychologically taunting banter

The HK Cricket Club ‘Taverners’ – Home Team

A similarly committed group of mostly amateur and some not so amateur part-time cricketers, currently domiciled in HK, and comprising lawyers, bankers, medicos, captains of industry and other assorted ne’r do wells. Operating out of the Hong Kong Cricket Club’s (HKCC) Chater Tavern – or ‘Bradman’s Lair’ – this team of gentleman is well known locally for regularly laying siege to the Main Bar at the Kowloon Cricket Club, locking themselves in, and then not being seen for days after annexing that hallowed watering hole in the name of their mother club


THE DAY BEGINS

The day dawns grey, the humidity of Hong Kong in May percolating all parts of life – minds, bodies, and manifolds. This is it. The Big One. Match 3 between these two leviathans of the Hong Kong social sporting scene. These men of willow and pine, cleated shoes and floppy hats, with towering intellects and insatiable sporting hunger. Collectively driven to beat the odds, better the other, and empty the beer cooler together afterwards

How would the day end ? What drama would there be ? Who would be remembered in the annals of Hong Kong social cricket ? Would the ‘Taverners’ get up for a 3rd time in 3, running rough shod over the ‘Hackers’ after a shellacking in Match 1, and a close call in Match 2. Or would the ‘Hackers’ get up and be able to look back in years to come, and remember the moment when they were inspired to meet, match, and master those terrifying ‘Taverners’ on this one May day? It would prove to be a clash of titans, a conflict of chaos, a war between two worlds. The cold, hard, steeliness of the hard-drinking team from the HKCC Chater Tavern, 2nd Floor, The HKCC, 137 Wong Nai Chung Gap Road, Hong Kong. Or the flamboyant, flying, fun-loving men of the waters and beaches of Sai Kung and Clearwater Bay on the sunny Kowloon Peninsula – where lives are lived more akin to Hawaii than Hong Kong. The Nav certainly knew which team he would wager his money on

(Capn’s Ed Note : The Oxford English Dictionary defines cricket as a “game played with ball, bat, and wicket.” Probably a more apt description is 11 men and a 12th man or ‘Sub’, standing around for an entire day, watching other men thrash at a small leather orb missile, using what looks like a large spatula made from the wood of the willow tree. One team trying to run themselves ragged, scoring the most ‘runs’ after connecting with the missile, while protecting their three 71.1cm vertical wooden stumps and two 11cm horizontal wooden bails. Concurrently, the other team doing everything criminally possible - within the rules of the game - to fling asunder the stumps and bails using the said missile. Countries have been conquered, governments have fallen, and entire industries lost on the results of cricket ‘matches’. Indeed it has oft been said that the only reason India and Pakistan still exist is because they regularly play cricket – with their generals’ too busy enjoying the competitive fireworks of leather on willow to comply with Delhi or Islamabad’s directive to “Press that bl**dy button!”)


1pm. An air of nervous tension around the ground. The myriad children of these ‘Men of Willow’ moving like ants across the playing field, stomping on the wicket, moving the boundary ropes, playing scrabble in the large manually operated scoreboard. The groundsman, staring in shock, hip flasks close at hand, trying to shoo these little beasts from this one of Hong Kong’s sporting cathedrals for gentlemen. And so they appeared from the club house, dressed in their club colours, variously gloved, helmeted, and padded like Spartans, ready to close in battle to beat the other fellow

The ‘Taverners’, resplendent in the traditional English ‘creams’, caps and bright white shoes, with names like George, Douglas, Eric and Simon subtly tailored to their personas but on no part of their uniforms. These genteel man, Lions in the place of lambs, reminding us of those great Kings, Warriors and freedom fighters - the fifth English Monarch, the great red Viking leader, that WW II warrior of the sky, and the renowned Latin Liberator of the Americas. Yet their cricket creams remained a comforting throw-back to the English village green before the valour of the Somme, Flanders, and Passchendaele.

Opposing them, the ‘Hackers’, gleaming bright in their Colonial white, white, whites - a splash of gay navy blue across their shoulders - floppy hats and loud blue caps, with names like ‘Sainty’, ‘Soos’, ‘Trev’ and ‘Schatsie’ proudly emblazoned in 50 point font on their backs. Their calm, casual Antipodean or African manner a reminder of why the southern allies didn’t do too well at Chunuk Bair, Lone Pine, and Ladysmith – until they learned the rules of engagement and redeemed themselves at Crete, El Alamein, and Malagasy. The Captains’ closed. Hands were shaken. Steely mumblings of ‘good game, good-luck, best fortune’ - with fingers crossed behind their backs. The Head Umpire appeared, a coin produced and thrown high into the grey particulated sky, a call made by the visiting ‘Hackers’ Captain – “Heads !”

The Nav imagining all this, arrived late after catching a couple of episodes of ‘Dog Fights’ on the History Channel, part of a 6 hour May Day Marathon of that terrific TV series, weighed up the opportunity of learning more about the how the F86 Sabre matched the MIG 15, versus a chance to snatch a siesta on the sidelines at the cricket. The Nav eventually saw the light and decided on the sleep – little did he know what awaited him. Out of the taxi at the HKCC, to the outdoor café by the field, acknowledging and cheek kissing all the wives and girlfriends of cricketers (WAGCs), ready to settle in for a tall cappuccino and a quiet kip, then rudely interrupted by the ‘Hackers’ Cap’n for the day reaching out “Oy Nav, out here now ! We need a square leg umpire. Out you go lad.” A look of consternation on The Nav’s face, square leg umpire ? “Where’s square leg ?” he mumbled to himself.

Cap and sunnies put in his hands, pushed to the gate, and he found himself on Hong Kong’s own ‘Field of Dreams.’ Pointed towards square leg - or ‘Foolish Cover’ as it is described on the map of cricket field positions - again wishing that that hand-held GPS had been bought before the Targa Tasmania so he could locate mid-wicket - The Nav made his way past the very distinguished looking Bowlers End lead Umpire, John ‘The Judge’, a global stalwart of all things legal in matters of discipline in world Cricket. Nervously deciding to indicate his less than substantial expertise in the rules of the greatest game, and having had no opportunity to study Wisden, The Nav commented on his way past “Ah, how do you do. Um, I do a lot of sailing…..”, to which there was a crystal clear riposte, carrying to the boundary many many metres away “Well I don’t !” Nodding his understanding of his place in this day of sporting drama, and humbly chastised but looking forward to washing ‘The Judges’ breakfast dishes and shining his shoes on the morrow, The Nav walked purposefully to his ‘Foolish’ spot on the oval, and stood ready in trepidation, thinking not for the first time in the past few months “How the h*ll did I get myself into this situation?”