beard watch

Fresh from watching a quick bowler no one cares about, I now watch the cricket bowler that everyone loves.

Dirty Dirk Nannes.

The wild colonial beast man, with the beard.

I finish up my non Dirk related work before the game started, so I get to watch the man warm up.

His warm ups seemed to have no real energy, he was jogging in, bowling a metre over the crease, and occasionally missed the man with the baseball mit.

Pretty much how you would expect him to warm up.

Then another mit was placed at the Yorker length and once he hit it, and an assistant coach got overly excited at the occurrence.

During Middlesex’s innings I couldn’t see the great man, so I had to hope for a complete collapse.

I all but had it too, but Ed Joyce and Shaun Udal put their heads down, but eventually they made it to Dirk after Murali Kartik had some fun.

Dirk came in with the swagger of a man who does not realise how bad a batsman he is.

Luckily he was at the other end, and with Tim Murtagh going out first ball, Dirk was saved the embarrassment of a failure.

Although I am sure he believes he was robbed of a great cameo innings.

He walked off with Murtagh, he was smiling, it looked like they have a great friendship, the sort of friendship that means you can end up in crap night clubs together and laugh when the other plays an asshole of a shot and gets clean bowled.

Dirk’s career batting average in List A remains at 2.75.

The first over was to be bowled by the man, and while he waited for the Sussex batsman to come out he paced at the top of his mark like an angry hippo looking for a tourist to crush.

Finally when the batsman made his way out Dirk flew in with more speed and power than the average Spartan, and bowled a wide.

Then he got his radar humming, like radars do.

Part of the team plan was obviously to bowl short outside off, and after the point fielder, whose name is not important, fumbled for the third time, something called yardy was gone.

And the sussex crowd, knowing they were in the midst of greatness, gave him hushed tones in which to celebrate with.

Dirty Dirk finished his over with typical fire and brimstone and the batsmen met and tossed a coin as to who was going to face the behemoth next over.

1-0-1-1

Prior was to be the unlucky guinea pig.

Prior played around in his crease and went for walks for what was an actually eternity.

Finally he faced up, and Each ball was full of venom, and slapped into the bat, not the other way round.

An edge was converted to two, when 70’s porn star Tyrone Henderson miss fielded due to the amazing pace put on the ball from Dirk, next ball furious at this mistake Dirk came off the long run, his normal run, and beat Prior with breath taking skill.

Prior bunted a single off the last ball in fear.

2-0-4-1

Wright was quick to edge the man of the moment, anything to get off the strike.

Prior was left infront of the stumps like a man holding a bucket as the volcano erupted. In desperation he flung the bucket and it got him 3 runs through cover.

Wright cleverly got off strike again with a bambi like prod.

Prior survived a ball jangler off the last ball.

3-0-9-1

Someone took a wicket at the other end, but it hardly mattered, the crowd knew why they were there.

The farce continued between bat and goliath.

It seemed the job to slay the dragon had fallen to Prior, he didn’t look up to it, but does any man in the face of a dragon.

A pull shot, which off a normal bowler would have raced to square leg, limped it’s way over mid off.

Dirk was full of furious anger, but alas, no wickets were to come.

4-0-15-1

Then he was rested, you cannot perform up to that level without losing a part of yourself, and like always he left a piece of his heart out on the pitch.

Shaun Udal, the boys in pink’s 8th captain this year, moved Dirk to the other end, so they didn’t feel jealous.

Prior was still there at this time, and the battle royale continued, well not this over, Murray Goodwin was on strike.

Murray managed to use all of his mutant Western Australian Zimbabwean skills to counteract the brute force.

5-0-17-1

The next over was more ferocious stuff.

A short ball to Prior was so good that he hit it in the air, then ran around like a blind penguin and almost ran himself out.

Dirk was strutting like a magnificent yeti at this stage.

Goodwin managed to save his hip by swatting one away, that luckily found its way to the rope.

6-0-23-1

To be honest the pressure was too much for me.

I could see our hero was yet again going to lose the game, after another freakish moral victory.

Leaving the ground i knew i had seen something special, children had wept, old people had strokes, and kidults were confused by their new moniker.

He is Dirty Dirk Nannes, say his name out loud with reverence.

And no, he did not fall over today.www.cricketwithballs.com... fighting the war on tony greig