This summer will see Rosaneri enter into the mysterious world of timed matches.

As previously discussed on this website a timed game does give the Captain a lot more to think about. With the obvious headache being when to declare.

With this in mind I turned to Wisden, the cricketer’s bible, and looked to see if I could glean any inspiration. But what about this, I stumbled across the most outrageous declaration of all time.

In 1894 Western Australia declared against Victoria after just one ball !

In an amazing situation the first ball of the match was hit into the branches of a tree just within the boundary rope. The ball was out of reach and Victoria appealed for a lost ball. The umpires disagreed as they claimed the ball could not be lost as everyone could see it.

The batsmen carried on running while the home side tried to get the ball down. Reports from the match suggest that Victoria called for an axe to chop the tree down. They didn’t have any luck finding an axe, but they did find a shotgun and tried to blast the ball down. After several misses the ball was finally dislodged and it fell onto the outfield. Unfortunately, nobody thought to catch the ball and the batsmen claimed 286 runs !

At this point Western Australia declared their innings and went on to record a comfortable win.

I doubt any of our Captains will be in such a privileged position, but it will be interesting to see how we handle the declaration issue when it eventually comes our way.

But in order to be able to declare we need to keep working on our batting during the winter nets. This weeks net will continue to be at Goffs School in Cheshunt.