Early on Saturday 11th June, still hung over / not yet lubricated with pale ale, six men (noting other teams all had 7 or 8 to ease the pain!) arrived at the Chute CC ground to be handed a yellow t-shirt and given a quick opening brief on how six aside cricket works. The day is well organised by Chute, there are boundary duties and Square Leg duties to keep the day moving fast, lunch is taken around the pavilion with free burgers and beer and the rules became clear just after the first match! We enjoyed everything on offer during the day, although the Monxton Monks (Appleshaw 2nd XI and eventual plate winners) according to their team total bar bill for the day (£14) were taking this seriously; For comparison Appleshaw - £65!

First up for the re-named 'Crappleshaw', Wilton Warriors in green. They were a team built around one very good bat, so they posted a strong total which, while still getting to grips with dot balls being a little bit of a handicap, we came up a few short of.

Next, Hurstbourne Tarrantulas in mint green (!), again two decent youngsters providing the spine of their team. We took a few good wickets and Jules Pannett took a good c&b from a ball slapped quickly back past him which he plucked nonchalantly. There were a few runs we didn’t take, so alas we came up one run short.

Our third match was the Chute Bummers in blue. Lets be honest, we’d had lunch and they could smell blood…
We weren’t taking all runs available which, despite our decent bowling and better fielding, they got through this with overs to spare!

Our final match, given an appearance in the final was looking unlikely at this stage, was against Monxton Monks in fuchsia pink. It was a good match, we took wickets and scored steadily, but sadly still came up short by 2 runs. Another decent catch by Jules Pannett from his own bowling falling to his left.

The key is scoring off every ball possible and willingness to take risks when batting; each batting side only faces 30 balls so a par score is between 50-60. A level of fitness to sprint around the outfield cutting off boundary shots is also a helpful attribute. But the day is immense fun, well organised and with cricket, beer, burgers and free t-shirts, what's not to like!