Up, up and out

Some thoughtful comments feature below in response to my post on Chanders hitting a six to win a one-day international (it won't ever be done to win a test match, thats for sure.) Anyway, those comments prompted a trip down memory lane for me, when I'd placed in a similar situation, and was only cheated out of a chance at glory by the stupidity of a rule in our park version of the game. The situation was as follows: many, many summers ago, my local street team had managed to position itself for a possible win in one of our evening games in the local park. We needed twelve runs off the final two deliveries. And I was on strike. And I was facing the opposition's leading quick. He was a little bugger, ran in quickly and delivered the red sphere quite quickly. No short-pitched stuff but he just came on rather briskly. We were playing in the corner park - the neighborhood park was made up of four smaller parks, each occupying a corner. The streets ran along two exterior sides of the parks so that each park featured two edges on streets and two on interior park paths. If you hit the ball into the side street (effectively the legside boundary for a righthand bastman in our park) you were out. If you hit the ball straight into the other park (whether you went over long or longoff was immaterial), it was six.

So, back to me. I hit the fifth ball of the over straight back over the bowler's head for six. Six required. I hit the last ball out of the park for a huge.......dismissal. I hadn't hit the ball straight enough; instead, the ball had sailed out of the park on the legside, out onto the street, and indeed, had fallen into the garden of one of the houses that bordered the park. It was the biggest shot I'd played in a very long time; I had connected cleanly with a ball pitched on middle and lifted it over midwicket. But in that park, it was out. I had had a chance at park cricket glory; hit two of my best shots ever, and still holed out and lost.