Team #2 Triumphs in Inaugural Performance Rounders Challenge

Wednesday, August 14, 2019 – Kingston: Team #2 came out on top in the hard-fought inaugural running of the Performance Comms Rounders Challenge last night.

With each team taking four innings, Team #2, captained by event organiser and adjudicator Simon Lush, raced out to an early lead in the first, taking a 6.5-1.5 headstart.

The squad – comprising Lusherman, The Boff, Jivory, Linds, Milton, ‘Neeq, Rov, Chloe ‘Welsh Wizardress’ Yemm, Gunn and Seast – faltered in the second and third innings, going almost three and out in the third and allowing Team #1 a chink of light to get back into the game.

That they did with aplomb, firing in rounder after rounder to close up the scores, before Team #2 put in an outstanding final innings to seal the victory 17-12 (or something like that).

The match was not without controversy, with some mildly bad-tempered accusations of regulatory violations and one case of attempted murder, when Team #1’s Geordie representative Sam Wilko took a huge swing at the ball but, in the process, flung the bat at some speed towards a prone and rather surprised Reaney. Thankfully, Sam’s aim was off and there followed a lengthy delay to the game while the teams searched the undergrowth for the wayward bat.

Team #1 – consisting of Tashtag Perry, Wilko, Joef, Clemmie, Dick Tanner, Murph, Sheedy, Susan, Sizer and Nicky – showed some tight fielding in the middle innings, allowing its batting prowess to come to the fore as Team #2’s fielding disintegrated briefly mid-match.

Other points of note in the game included:

• Gunn living up to his name and firing a bullet from his bat directly into the face of bowler Joef – the shot should have been caught but Joef was hampered by holding a beer at the time
• Nick’s dramatics in reaching various bases – Nick seemed to think he was playing baseball a lot of the time, sliding almost recklessly into base two on more than one occasion
• The massive shunt in the first innings between a Seast going at full tilt towards base four and encountering a Tash Perry in his trajectory; the resulting clash provided the match’s first injuries, with teeth and fingers variously being damaged
• Milton’s frankly unnecessary showboating as he scored a rounder in the second innings
• Team #2’s well-honed partnership between backstop Lusherman and Gunn at first base, which dismissed several Team #1 players
• The revenge catch that all but ended the match – having caught out Boff in the final innings, Wilko was repaid the favour by the Performance talisman, who snatched Sam’s straight shot from the air just in front of base two – some unnecessary taunting and swearing followed

Post-match, a rogue game of American Football broke out, with Linds and Sizer excelling at center, despite a few wayward snaps – witness quarterback Jackson Flaxon-Waxon (Joef) taking yet another ball to the face and, on the other side, QB Hingle McCringleberry (Boff) failing to gather in some wildly high snaps from Reaney.

No-one knows who won the football game, but it could not be stopped.

ENDS