Washington Cricket Club - 40th Anniversary Year

Last year, Washington’s game at Berkhampsted lasted just one over before a cloudburst washed away all hopes of further play. This year the game staggered to the end of its second over before the players bowed to the inevitable and dashed for the boundary beneath a storm of hail and torrential rain. Several pitch inspections and an early tea later, the game was called off.

However this is a game which would always have been more memorable in Washington annals for events off the field than anything which took place in the middle.

Wash skipper Pete Demetri and 3 fellow Aussies got held up in traffic and so only arrived at the ground at 2pm, the official start time. To expedite proceedings, Demetri immediately located the Home captain and they marched out to toss: ‘heads’ called Demetri, ‘tails’ replied the coin, and Wash faced an afternoon in the field.

Demetri returned to the ‘Away’ changing room to break the bad news to his team-mates, only to swing back the door and find himself confronted by the faces of 11 strangers!

Then it dawned on him: Wrong team mates! Wrong ground! Wrong oppo! Wrong toss!

Leaving a hasty message that someone inform the Home skipper, Demetri and his Aussie car full scarpered and eventually found their way to Berkhampsted, half a mile down the road, where they were reunited with their real team-mates.

What the puzzled skipper at Ground No 1 must have thought is anyone’s guess - was it a strange new Aussie ‘Max’ sport - “toss and run”? Four guys travelling round in a car, randomly joining in with whatever game they came across for five minutes and then doing a runner?

Anyway, things got no better for poor Peter as he duly lost the second toss as well. Though that turned out to be academic within fifteen minutes, ‘the afternoon in Hertfordshire’ will stick in the memory for a long, long time.