A new development in tour reporting this year is the inclusion of some brief video clips that can be downloaded. In the absence of any pictures of cricket the day might best be represented by a picture of the rain, but instead here is a clip of Matt "Shushey" Bushe playing table tennis.

With news coming in that the Monday game had already been cancelled the tour party eventually started to haul itself back to Clifton. There the younger and more hooliganistically inclined members of the party set off in Day-Glo shirted slendour for the wonders of Clifton, while the older and more genteel elements went for a pleasant meal at Matthew "Q" Quantrill's favourite local restaurant, Pizza Provencale. Q and John "Spot" Howland did maintain the Day-Glo theme, though let down by their companions, Shushey and James "Senior Pro" Thorn. The senior members of the party then retired to bed, while Shushey headed out into the wilds of clubland to joing the younger mob. No doubt severely exaggerated tales of their exploits will feature in tomorrow's reports, reports which will certainly need some padding to make up for the absence of any cricket.

Click here for full scorecard.

The younger part of the party showed dedication to duty by hiring a net at the nearby Globe Sports shop, and having fun with a bowling machine which could reach speeds of 99 mph, though even Ketchup was reluctant to take on that sort of pace, though surely it is the sort of thing he faces on a regular basis for the mighty Hartley CCCC. There again, their wicket is a bit low and slow. The remainder of the tour party ambled around Clifton shopping, or chatted up the cleaning ladies, which did at least have the benefit of producing directions to a pleasant waterside lunch venue before moving on to Avon Meads and the bowling alley. Mr. Howland went into expert negotiator mode, and managed to get a bargain price for everyone as students for two games, and the challenge was on.

In this case the reports will give the exact names under which people bowled, with no further clue to who is who, save to say that there was intense interest in Zippy's bowling action and whether his run up would take him back onto the bypass or not. As it turned out his action was indeed unique, but did fit within the alley. A brief video clip can be downloaded here, and hopefully a picture will be available of his action frozen in the delivery stride once it is downloaded from Swampy's camera.

But back to the crucial action, which in the absence of any cricket will be heavily over-analysed. Indeed if the weather doesn't improve some sort of method will have to be found to include bowling and golf scores in the tour averages in order to produce some sort of meaningful figures. For today's purposes the 15 players broke up into 3 groups which could be roughly categorised as 'impetuous youth', 'slightly more mature youth' and 'experience'. Suffice to say that experience proved to be the winner, with the top three bowlers all being amongst the oldest five players in the experienced group, and the overall team scores for the three groups being 851, 921 and 1209 respectively.

Impetuous Youth lived up to their name by rushing through their games, and in the early stages it was Sambucca who lead the way. Haki-Sak experimented with spin bowling, achieving enormous amounts of spin without a lot of control and accuracy, and Marshey also started experimentally before settling into a more serious attempt to get in the game. It was Mangez, though, who came through strongly to take the first round, in that group though.

In the meantime Slightly More Mature Youth were getting through their games faster than Experience, with Shushey and Stiffler vying for the lead, Ketchup trailing behind and Cisco just about managing to stay ahead of Roo. It was Stiffler who eventually surged through to win the first round for that team, and set the target for the first round overall.

Experience was telling, however, with the older bowlers getting through more slowly but with rather higher scores. Initially it was Spot and Senior Pro who were vying for the lead, but Senior Pro surged ahead when he scored a turkey (three successive strikes for those not au fait with technical ten pin bowling terms) in the middle of the game, and finished with a huge first round score of 176. Spot seemed to have second place secure, but Q sneaked past him in the final frame when only one stubborn pin stood between him and his own turkey, and the Experience team snatched the top three individual scores in the first round.

The second round followed a similar pattern in terms of speed of getting through games, this despite a long delay for Impetuous Youth while Haki-Sak took a fruit machine break. Sambucca faded this time, while Haki-Sak abandoned extreme spin and improved enough to ovetake Goldilocks, but it was Marshey and Mangez who ended up tying for individual team honours in this round, though Mangez comfortably led their team overall.

Slightly More Mature Youth saw quite a turnaround in their playing form, with Shushey fading slightly and failing to beat Mangez's target. Stiffler suffered possibly the worst decline of anyone, but still managed to hang in ahead of Mangez and set the highest two frame total to date, but Cisco made the biggest improvement to take individual honours for the round and sneak ahead of Marshey and Sambucca in the overall totals by 1 and 2 points respectively. Roo meanwhile managed to tie with Goldilocks and beat his mother, while also avoiding the overall wooden spoon, which was secured by Hali-Sak.

Meanwhile tension was building on the experience lane, with Q starting the second game in the way he had finished the first, a Turkey from the off giving him a huge lead. Spot and Senior Pro had started poorly, but began to get themselves together just as Q was faltering in the middle frames. There was additional tension for Zippy as he aimed to overtake Ketchup, and ended up managing to get enough to beat him by 1 point. Spot finished strongly to post a slight improvement on his first round score and post a new overall target that was some 58 points ahead of the previous lead of Stiffler's. Senior Pro stuttered to the finish, but his big first round lead was enough to keep him 19 points ahead of Spot, but it was Q who recovered with a good finish to post the best individual round of the day by clearing the last three pins for a spare, giving him 177 and an overall total of 333.

Excessively full and overly gory statistics below....

And so, back through the Bristol rush hour traffic via various routes taken intentionally or in the case of Shushey possibly less intentionally. The youth element headed for Pizza Express, food and another evening of hedonism in the fleshpots of Clifton and Bristol, probably hoping for more luck than one peck on the cheek between them. Shushey and Haki-Sak headed for the poker tournament at Rileys, hoping to better Coxy's third place finish two years earlier, while the champion bowlers found a wine bar where they could watch Kent destroying Durham in the Twenty20 Cup quarter finals before heading on to Browns for a further civilised meal. Tune in tomorrow for reports back from the Poker tournament, exaggerated accounts of the evening's carousing, a video clip of some poor innocent playing golf and maybe even some cricket reporting. And don't forget to check this report again for the addition of Swampy's beautifully posed photo of the Zippy bowling action in all its glory.

New Ash Green 232-4 dec. (38.5 overs)
Failand & Portbury 139-2 (21 overs)
Match (sort of) Drawn

For a while it looked as if today's report would be largely about the Pitch and Putt, but the grey clouds didn't quite deliver as much rain as they threatened to do, and there is some cricket to report, so the golf report will be limited to brief highlights rather than the detailed analysis that the bowling received. The previous night's exploits will also be quickly skipped over, largely because it appears that there were very few exploits. This year's tour party talk the talk, but in hedonism terms it appears that they are lightweights, something that may well come as something of a relief to anxious parents following the reports at home. Shushey and Haki-Sak hit the Rileys Monday evening poker tournament, and although Haki-Sak was out early it appeared that Shushey had done well as he revealed that he had finished fourth. That was until he revealed that unlike previous years, when the entry had been in the twenties on this occasion there were just nine players.

The night's revels were still obviously too much for Ketchup - although he made breakfast he then returned to his room to get ready for the golf and promptly fell asleep, having to be dragged from his room to join the waiting tour party in the car park. Sunshine bathed Ashton Court as the party set off in threes. Sambucca, Campari and Cisco led the way, with Cisco (who had showed fine form the previous year) looking to be the star again, as this video clearly demonstrates. They were followed by Mangez, Mop Head (today's name for Goldilocks) and Swampy, with Mop Head showing the form that was to carry him into last place from the start – just look at where his club head contacts the ground in his first attempt at a tee shot. It was then the turn of the old stagers, with Spot looking a favourite ahead of Senior Pro and Q. Ketchup, Shushey and Haki-Sak (the one golf pro amongst the party, and hot favourite for victory) made up the fourth group, with Zippy and Roo following on at the end. The favourites struggled, though, with Cisco going round in the nineties and Haki-Sak losing all his balls and walking in form the 14th with a score already in the high 70s with 5 holes to play. Spot also faded, though he and the Senior Pro fought a nerve tingling battle on the last hole which resulted in them tying. Swampy managed to break a club and have to walk in with two to play, but the battle for victory came from two unexpected sources, with Shushey going round in 83, but the winner being Q who left a 20 foot birdie putt an agonising 2 inches short on the 9th and finished in 81 despite a disastrous final hole. The suspiciously huge improvement on his previous year's performance makes him a strong candidate for a visit from the drugs testers later in the day.

While the party were on the course the sunshine had given way to grey clouds, and brief rain showers threatened to leave the party soaked, but relented before staining half the team fluorescent yellow from the tour shirts. Lunch was taken at the Black Horse, and arrival at the ground found the stumps in place in a wicket in surprisingly good condition. Captain for the day was Chopper, and on winning the toss he elected to bat first. The bowling attack was more gentle than in most years at Failand, but Q and Shsuhey managed to give their wickets away in pretty quick time. Ketchup and Chopper have been one of the more dominant partnerships of the season, and they made few mistakes, a run out looking the most likely way their partnership would end aside from one skyer from Ketchup which was badly missed when he was in the 30s. It proved an expensive mistake as he initially matched Chopper stroke for stroke, but after the first brief rain break started to hit out fearsomely, striking 10 sixes (believed to be a new club record) in making 116 before being bowled by a gentle full toss. Chopper had been left somewhat behind by this burst, but was hardly slow himself, and undeterred by a second rain break and the loss of Haki-Sak, bowled by a ball that he insisted was the best he had ever faced, he chopped his way to an unbeaten hundred of his own, prompting an immediate declaration with the score at 232-4.

On a small ground it was not an excessively large score, but the slow wicket should have made it defendable. However some further rain during the tea break (and it should be said that tea was magnificent and plentiful) meant that conditions were hardly ideal for bowling – slippery run ups and a soaked ball making life more difficult for the bowlers than the batsmen. Mop Head started with an excellent five over spell, but Campari was rather less impressive, struggling for length early on and being punished by John Bachelor. The touring party were racing through their overs, bowling 9 in 24 minutes, from which 39 runs were scored, before the rain returned (or more accurately became heavier for a short while) and forced a dash to the pavilion. There was then a frustrating delay of nearly an hour during which the rain never stopped but varied in strength, before eventually easing up enough to allow some more play. With only 15 overs possible there was no possibility of a proper result for either side, so the match has to be officially described as a draw, but to add some interest to the final few overs a notional target was set of 100 more runs to win in 15 overs. With ten wickets in hand, a wet ball and wet footholds this was a target which heavily favoured the batting team, requiring them overall only to match the scoring rate of the first innings, and to do so for far fewer overs. Although Campari did take an early wicket John Bachelor and Adrian Meacham made light work of the target, hitting most of the bowlers to all corners of the ground, with Sambucca particularly expensive. Having decided he wouldn't bowl today he couldn't resist the temptation when he saw Swampy being hit around, but he was the victim of the prime part of John Bachelor's attacking batting. He did miss a difficult caught and bowled chance, and nearly had a wicket when Swampy couldn't quite reach a hit to the cow corner boundary, but suffered the indignity of going for 22 in his second (and final) over, without really bowling badly at all. Haki-Sak replaced him and was the beneficiary, along with Q, of a generous donation from Bachelor, who strolled down the wicket, swung lazily and missed, having just discussed whether or not anyone else was padded up. They were, and they soon finished the game off, only two being needed to reach the notional target at the point when the wicket fell.

So a tour game had at least reached a sort of conclusion, though it wasn't exactly a complete game, and drinks and fines were then taken in the bar for an hour or so, before a move back to Clifton for another legendary night out...

Match Cancelled - Very, Very Wet