An intrepid band of MAL-adventurers took to the road after Shabbat. Their goal, Antwerp, Europe’s diamond capital. Their mission, to play cricket where no Jewish cricket team had played before.
The road was long, with many a winding turn. It was so long that it was 6am before we collapsed into our beds at the hotel. After roughly five minutes sleep, we were up again, and on our way to Rumst to play against Antwerp Cricket Club.
On the way to the ground, it rained and rained and rained. We muttered and grumbled about there being no chance of a game, but the rain stopped not long after our arrival, and after some frantic sweeping of the pitch by our hosts, and some impressive saw-dusting, we were soon away.
Antwerp seemed to have players cropping up from everywhere, so it was decided that they could use up to 14 players, and we could use our 12, although only 11 would be on the field at any one time.
With the artificial surface, spikes weren’t allowed and with the amount of rain that had fallen the ground was very wet. This led to some fairly treacherous footing, and the inevitable happened as a couple of overs in, Mark Landau ended up on his backside chasing a ball in his follow-through.
Marc Mer bowled quickly and impressively in his opening spell, picking up 2-24 from five overs, and Landau tiptoed his way though the puddles to pick up 1-19 from five. Grant Traub, as always, bowled immaculately bowling eight teasing overs for 2-21, but in the middle overs MAL lost their way a little as some lusty hitting from Antwerp took them to a very competitive total, and all the other bowlers went for over seven an over.
The fielding was generally fairly committed, none more so than Mer who nearly pulled off an absolutely stunning catch at deep square leg, but instead broke a finger and tore his nail off in the process.
Another enormous shower brought the players from the field after 32 overs, for a few beers and a fabulous chicken curry. Remarkably the rain cleared once more, and we were able to begin our reply.
The outfield, which had been long and slow when the game started was now utterly sodden, and the ball was not travelling at all. This frustrated the batsmen enormously and the scoring rate never really got going.
Wickets fell at fairly regular intervals, with only three MAL batsmen getting into double figures: Landau made 35, Yoav Lebens 12 and Grant Traub 16. MAL eventually finished on 116-9 from their 32 overs which was a pretty good effort given the conditions.
Thanks must go to our hosts, Antwerp, who could not have been more helpful or tried harder to get the game on.
After a short hop back to the hotel we were off out for dinner to a kosher restaurant smack in the middle of the diamond district which had been kept open especially for us. Dinner was good, but after lots of talk earlier about how much we were all going to drink, tiredness crept up, and we were back in the hotel by 2am (Pinty Baddiel being the honourable exception – he would have kept partying all night if anyone had kept him company).
Monday saw a lunch at the falafel house for some, and a search for Belgian fish delicacies for others. After that we drove to Brussels where we had a brewery tour scheduled. Being a bunch of Jews, we were late and after being chastised by the brewery, we were allowed to visit, but had to guide ourselves around the brewery, which suited us, though the tasting afterwards did not. The beers were very traditional in style and, though very flavourful, were very different from the kinds of beers one can get in England.
After the brewery we headed for the Royal Brussels CC, near Waterloo. On arriving to see a lovely looking cricket field, with much shorter outfield than the previous day, we were optimistic. But it wasn’t to be – not only did it keep on raining, but it was bitterly cold. When the opposition did turn up, they looked even less keen to play than we did, so we settled for giving the bar a good go, and indulging in a terrific barbeque.
When we found out that the opposition had a quick bowler who played six Test matches for Zimbabwe in the early 2000s, we quickly realised that a couple of beers might be the better option. And so we headed back home, getting back around 3am on Tuesday morning.
It was a great tour with some great people. But I think we would all agree that we have seen enough rain for a whole season now. Here’s to Sunday and a win in the first league game of the season, and lots of sunshine!