2017 has seen something of a bumper year in terms of Twickenham CC members being engaged in action at The Home of Cricket (Lord's). First we had Clint McCabe representing the MCC, and that was followed by Darshan Chohan playing there for Cambridge University against Oxford (see here). And, just last week our scorer, Carol Bryant, stepped up to the plate to notch nothing less than the Women's World Cup Final (see here). That's quite a performance.

It looks, however, as if two more TCC members plus a repeat offender (Clint McCabe) will be making their respective debuts at Lord's before the season is out. Carlos Nunes, Dave Russell and McCabe will be flying the TCC flag as they represent the MCC in the club's intra-T20 tournament. The finals day, when four regional sides from within the MCC all converge on NW8, takes place on 13 September.

Rain and tension
The background to this is that although the MCC is clearly one club, for the purposes of organising matches it splits itself up in to different regions. It's for that reason that it is not implausible for the MCC to be found playing a number of matches around the country on the same day. Twickenham finds itself in the 'London North' region and McCabe, Nunes and Russell were part of an 'MCC London North' side that travelled to Bishop's Stortford in Essex to play in a round robin regional jamboree. The winners of that shebang qualified for the finals day.

The fact that rain was in the air no doubt throw something of a (literal and metaphorical) dampener on things, but with the prize of a(t least one) game of cricket on the hallowed turf at stake McCabe, Russell and Nunes knew that there was plenty to play for. London North started well in their first game, bowling East Anglia out for 108. They then proceeded to chase that down for the loss of 5 wickets, a predictably bombastic 60 from Ealing's Mylo Wilkin doing much for the cause.

Drama to the end
That convincing victory ensured that a win in the second game would seal the deal. South Region took first hit and were sitting at 31-2 (after 4.3 overs) when the weather worsened and the rain swept in. Play was abandoned for the day. What to do? Given that it was a shoot out between the two sides for the coveted top spot, it all came down to a dramatic bowl out.

Five bowlers were allowed two balls each at three stumps. Given how wet the cherry was The Horse didn't get chucked the ball - too difficult to grip, so I hear. The North Region went for the medium pacers. That meant Carlos was suddenly in the game.

As well all know, he has a knack of popping up and taking the odd scalp or two by bowling wicket to wicket. Perhaps this rumour has now got around the cricketing circuit. Well, if it has, all we can say to everyone else is that we convey our humblest apologies for being the purveyors of 'fakenews'; two deliveries, two misses!

But, Nunes was not alone. Indeed, no one in the South Region's shootout team managed to hit the stumps at all! London North, meanwhile, registered three strikes; very much a case of three strikes and you're in as opposed to three strikes and you're out.

Dreams fulfilled
Playing at Lord's is every cricket player's dream, and to have had no less than five Twickenham players play there (I am counting Carol's scoring as equivalent to playing!) in one season is really very impressive. Let's hope that come 13 September the guys enjoy the day, have a hit ... and that it doesn't rain! These bowl outs, there are awful on the nerves.