When the merchandise options are a snood, fleece and woolly hat, something has to have gone wrong with the tour planning, hasn’t it? Not exactly. We are off to Finland and Estonia and the weather’s not exactly barmy at this time of the year. Best be prepared. Why no one suggested Quokka umbrellas, I do not know.

As per usual, we spent a large part of the trip `rehydrating’, so may have missed some of Helsinki and Tallin’s highlights. There was a lack of the usual tour literature that outlines these, so I’ll fill you in now. Helsinki has the cleanest tap water of any big city. Finns are the unquestioned champions of sauna, with over 3 million of them. If you stay with a Finnish family, it wouldn’t be surprising to find more than one sauna in the home. Why? Why not? Finnish is extremely difficult to learn, with lots of compounded words. Here’s one of them lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas, although unless you are a non-commissioned student officer mechanic for airplane auxiliary jet engines, you probably won’t need to use it. Other than the Northern lights, the entertainment highlight is the Wife Carrying Championships. Milk is considered the national drink, but other popular tipples are sima, a low alcohol mead, Salmiakki Koskenkorva, a liquorish flavoured liquor and aloviina, which is a brandy cut with a grain spirit. Kippis.

There was a choice of flights to Helsinki, at ether 7:30 am or 9:30 am. I was slightly surprised that everyone except me chose to get up at the crack of dawn to grab the red eye, but each to their own. We all made our flights. Just. New British citizen The Yak found the Government’s issuing of new
passports to be about as efficient as, well, pretty much everything else they touch, so decided to re-join Team America. Fuck yeah. I had my own passport issues, with Finland passport control unimpressed by my “I’ve come to play cricket” reason for travel when trying to enter the country. The lack of a Quokka blazer to back up my claim was immediately regrettable.

Paolo Wanchope
During the earlier flight, Egg unveiled an updated set of Quokka Top Trumps, with Todd one of several new cards. I must say it was somewhat surprising to find he only scored eight in the drinking prowess category, but I guess you have to have something to aim for. Niall, unhappy at his score of five, enquired how he could boost this and was informed he’d need to prove himself in a game of mano-e-mano with Binman. The challenge was accepted, but didn’t end well, with him chundering after just a single drink and thus earning himself the nickname Paolo, after the one time Derby striker, Paolo One Shot. Yeah, I know, after five pints it worked better.

I located the main tour party in a bar next to our hotel. Helsinki beer prices are not for the feint hearted, but a few drinking games put that concern into the rear view mirror. 21s is the first step to a care home, but later that evening when watching Saints lose to Villa, I wished I had started playing
much earlier. “This shit is hurting my eyes Skip”. More beer needed. A few successful games of shuffleboard took my mind off Saints’ performance, but later in the Tron-themed pool hall, I replicated my team by losing to all comers. Unified Quokkas pool rules are desperately needed.

Tour organisers’ Faggie and Driver had initially selected a single bedroom accommodation for the Helsinki leg of the trip, but there were slight concerns about the length of the bathroom queue, or more accurately one’s position in said queue. In the end, an alternative was found, with rooms more compact than a Japanese capsule hotel, which would have been great if we could enter them. Key codes were the one vital bit of information missing. Eventually we got in and I had Todd for very close company. Please tell me that’s your arm mate?

A floating IKEA, obviously

A lack of Uber’s created a mad dash to catch the ferry, which was brimming full of Finnish power drinkers looking to minimise their weekend bar bill by first spending 70 Euros to get to Tallin. Todd was in his element, although he seemed disappointed to be dragged away from the ferry terminal
bar. Not sure why there was Ikea on board, perhaps the lure of flatpack furniture is too much after 18 pints of Koff? Niall revealed that it was snowing on deck, which at least meant the Quokka beanies would get an outing. While we searched for vürtsikilu or Whoppers, Evil Dave and Binman decided to share a cabin. What goes on tour, stays on tour.

As we set sail, an 84 year old Jamaican fast bowler name Ira Ebanks introduced himself and recounted stories of playing with West Indian test stars of the 1960s, lifetime achievement awards for helping to establish cricket in Finland and his son, the lead singer of Bomfunk MCs, selling six million copies of `Freestyler’ worldwide. I’m not kidding. He explained that his team, Helsinki Cricket Club were also playing a game in Tallin. We deduced that their game was at the same venue as ours. We then discovered, that due to a lack of available players in Estonia, they were actually playing against us. I think the tour organisers may have missed a trick, but perhaps there would be better weather in Tallin…there wouldn’t.

I am sure you enjoyed my earlier Quokka’s guide to Helsinki’, so here’s everything you needed to know about Tallin. The medieval old town may be a UNESCO heritage site, but Tallin has been dubbed the most advanced digital society in the world and is the silicon valley of Europe. Although not in Finland’s class when it comes to sauna, Tallin does have quite a few of its own, which were frequented by the Russian Tsar, starting a trend. Most importantly, marzipan was invented here back in 1422. Oh, and there is a story about a Tallin hotel owner hosting the devils wedding, being paid in gold (which turned to horse shit) before falling dead, but we haven’t got time for all that.

Need a few hundred rugby shirts?

The Estonian National Cricket and Rugby field was on the outskirts of nowhere and ever so slightly open to the elements. Today, that element was water and lots of it. Apparently Tallin hadn’t had `proper’ rain for a couple of years. Our timing was superb. Leaving the shelter of the taxi, we made our way across the field to a couple of shipping containers, which I assumed had been converted into changing rooms. Unfortunately, the shipping container to changing room conversion part of the stadium generation plan had yet to commence. The good news was that if we needed 200 boxes of rugby equipment, we should be fine. Half an hour of standing in the rain convinced me that it was a very bad idea to allow the taxis to depart without us in them.

The rain contingency plan was `more drinking and shooting guns’. The perfect combination really. If half the Quokkas don’t know which end of a bat to hold, god help us if someone puts an AK in their hands. We took shelter in a sports bar and worked our way through their supply of cider and the day’s live Premiership football games. We were joined by our Estonian host Stuart and his wife who failed to fall for Radio John’s charms, “Sorry Radio, but I don’t date anyone older than my Dad”. I asked Paolo if was a batsman or bowler, and said his batting average was 65. Evil looked surprised and when we checked the LMS website it revealed it was actually a fraction over 22.15. Paolo explained that “it would be 65 if he hadn’t ever got out”.

Five or six pints later and we had blue skies and sunshine allowing an impromptu game of town square cricket, with skippy the star attraction. As per normal Faggie struggled for line and length. With time on our hands we took in a folk music concert put on by the Estonian Union of National Minorities and sampled shots of the local tipple. Terviseks. Estonians love a folk tune and have written over 133,000 of them. Thankfully, we left the concert at folk song number three in search of a speakeasy. There I made the mistake of sitting out of eyeshot of the thumb master and found myself downing two pints of freezing cold cider in quick succession, which brought a tear to the eye

This started a discussion as to who would make the Quokkas boat race team. No Paolo, your services won’t be needed. Maybe you can be the cox? Later, an Irish bar with a Brit pop covers band provided great entertainment and inspiration for a new Quokkoasis song (to the tune of she’s electric):

Heeeee’s a Seagull
He can bat and bowl better than Evil
He’s got shots that are unbelievable
But he hides at eight

What we want you to say
Is I’ll bat at first drop Skip
But he never does

We need a bat at number three
With a score of 79g
There’s only one man who’ll do
He is a Seagull
Can I be a Seagull too?

I shared a hotel room with Yak, Todd and Driver. It was like sleeping with Weezy from Toy `Story, several steam engines and an amorous lhasa apsos. I’ve never met a man that exhales so much gas and air as Driver. Sleeping’s cheating I guess, so I took the opportunity to visit the supermarket, which was located right inside the hotel. I stocked up with spicy sprats, meat jelly and blood dumpling. These guys know how to eat. Early risers were met by beautiful sunshine, which meant we would finally get a game of cricket, sort of.

Before the game, Egg was presented with the second golden Quokka cap as reward for reaching a hundred games. Well done sir. Somewhat surprisingly, Skip put us in to bat, perhaps emboldened by knowledge of Paolo’s batting average.

When the first game of tour is a complete washout, the last thing you want to do is get a fourth ball duck in the second, which is exactly what Todd acquired.

Thanks for coming.

Paolo one-shot struggled to live up to his new nickname, failing to connect with any of his numerous variations of the `’heave to cow’ for the first five overs. I should point out that, despite this, the scoreboard ticked
over nicely, as extras accumulated at healthy rate. Probably just a coincidence that Herc was fielding for the home side. Fortunately, Faggie did manage to put bat on ball, including one lovely trademark cut for four, but as would be the story of the Quokka innings, he didn’t stick around for very long. 37 for 2 quickly became 44 for 5 as The Yak, Paolo and Herc fell to some poor shots, none uglier than Herc’s mistimed pull when attempting to get off the mark.

Thanks for coming.

Evil Dave and Skip settled the ship, by which I mean Skipped scratched around for ten overs, but at least it interrupted the domino rally of wickets. But not significantly, as Dave failed to carry over his form with the bat from the game at Merstham CC and was out bowled. How else? That brought Driver to the crease. The only thing worse than getting a fourth ball duck on tour is being run out by some horrific calling from your Skipper. Cheers. The only Quokka that looked in any kind of touch with bat was Seagull, pulling and driving nicely.

Blink though and you will have missed his innings, as he was caught behind when the openers returned. Binman’s innings lasted about as long as his drinking competition with Paolo. Thankfully the Egg and Radio John played excellently for the last wicket stand, with Radio carrying his bat and top scoring with 16. Actually, to be precise, extras top scored with 32, bolstering our total to a massive 121.

During tea, when asked what a par score was on this track, I suggested 250 which turned out to be pretty accurate. Which is more than you can say for our bowling. Evil Dave went for 25 from his first two overs, a similar number came from Yaks three overs and a further 19 runs came from Driver’s short spell. The latter two did both take wickets though, with Driver clean-bowling the opener with an absolute beauty. Some degree of control was provided by Faggie, who once again bowled well.

It was all for nothing though, as the bowling from medium paced Skip was to our opponents liking and he went for nine an over.The highlight if the innings was Skip spending ten minutes repositioning Herc in the field to try “get into the batsman’s head” after he had scored two maximums in a row. This worked a treat, as the next ball only went for four. Sadly, there was very little else to report on and the Quokkas were well beaten in the end. Standard.

To help us forget our woeful performance, what we needed was a huge medieval feast at the Olde Hansa tourist trap, with elk, reindeer and bear sausages washed down with“man-sized” jugs of honey beer. That said, Driver was less than impressed when it was revealed that potatoes predated medieval times, so there wouldn’t be any on the menu, fried or otherwise. His mood improved somewhat when he was serenaded with a rendition of Danny Boy on the zanfana. Afterwards we headed for a sports bar to watch American egg chucking and drink Estonian trikoloor flag shots. A trip to an ice cream parlour completed the evening’s entertainment.

During the trip back, the antipodeans watched the Queen’s funeral. The rest of us spent the time raiding the gift store of ferry shaped fridge magnets and other ferry emblazoned shit. A signalling problem in Helskinki meant taxis were the only method of transport, which created a small beer window. Thank god. What would we have done without it? By then, I’d completely run out of steam, a bit like this match report…

Many thanks to Faggie and Lazy Driver for organising the tour. Whoever gave me COVID-19, thanks a bunch.

Ahoy me hearties. If the tour to Sri Lanka is half as much fun as the weekends jolly to the People’s Republic of Southsea, then the Quokkas are in for a real treat. It might perhaps be a surprise to many of you that there are some great similarities between the two venues, not least the deep harbours and long histories. I’m not sure Portsmouth has prehistoric settlements dating back 125,000 years, as can be found near Bundala, but we certainly have dinosaur fossils turning up right left and centre. Also, what Portsea Island lacks in Buddhist temples it more than makes up for in the way of two cathedrals, maritime history, high quality cricketing opposition, culinary delights and beautiful beachside facilities, though I suspect neither Galle or Candy will be quite as humid as Scandals nightclub. More of that later.

It’s funny, whenever I speak with my American or Russian friends especially, I’m always amazed at how extremely proud and passionate they are about where they come from. Probably because I have never felt that way about Pompey, despite living here for almost 20 years. However, as I sat on the beach soaking up the Saturday afternoon sun with half the Quokkas touring party and offering just a small slice of its deep history I started to feel a little attached to the old place. The city has not only been England’s first line of defence since before the French invasion in the 16th century and by the 19th century was the most fortified city in the world, but as England’s largest Royal Naval port has been a pivotal embarkation point for the D-Day landings and the Falklands War. There’s a lot to see and do for all the family, it’s certainly an interesting place, but it’s very much a fighting city, well, they certainly like a fight.

I didn’t tell you this before the mini tour, but the last time I invited a large group of friends from London to visit Portsmouth I took them to a popular nightspot whereupon they witnessed a mass brawl as they queued to get in. They joked about it for years afterwards, but at the time I think they wished they’d never left the confines of the M25. An island, the most densely populated city in the UK and home to two thirds of the Royal Navy’s entire surface fleet contribute to making this a rough and ready place at times, but as with all ports the 200,000 population is very fluid and as a result we hardly ever see ten women battering the shit out of each other before they have got in the club these days.

It’s a fair fight

An actual pavilion

In cricketing terms, we had a fight on our hands ourselves. You’ve heard of David and Goliath? Well this fixture turned out to be David’s hungover and out of shape older brother against the guy Goliath wants to be when he grows up. We were so much out of our depth, we could have been dropped into the middle of the Atlantic with only a pair of budgie smugglers and a robin hood costume and still had more chance of success, but that’s never stopped us before…

To be honest I always thought we might be up against it, this is The City of Portsmouth’s Cricket Club we are talking about here, but when their skipper revealed that “due to our under 19s having a rearranged game the team is just a little bit stronger than I’d hoped” I wondered if a side that failed to chase 93 last week was going to be quite strong enough. Actually, I think the phrase I used rhymes with clucking bell.   

The detail behind their skippers’ remark was that their overseas professional Fraser Hay (coming to an Australian test side soon), yes that’s right overseas professional, was playing and fresh from scoring 159 from 120 balls the previous day against Bournemouth in the British Gas Southern League division one. Thankfully “he’d only be fielding at slip and practicing his switch hitting if called upon to bat”. Fortunately for us he had to travel to Nottingham to play for the Hampshire County Cricket Club second XI against Nottingham, so we missed out on his slip catching, but sadly we did get to see him bat wrong handed better than most of England’s middle order.

Scandalous

Slick enjoys Scandal’s low ceiling

Crucially we prepared well for the game, with just about the right amount of Naval Rum to seriously not give a fuck if we lived or died, never mind win a game of cricket. The pre-for-mentioned Scandals did most of the damage. For all aging rockers and over the hill break-dancers like me it’s very sad news that this truly dreadful former wine bar, but fantastic after hours drinking establishment, is closing down. You have got to love a place that asks The Verger for photo ID.

Portsmouth bouncers are a bit wary of outsiders (having more than three teeth tends to give you away) coming onto the city and draining our resources of Sambuca, as only a man-o-man-o champion of his reputation can, but Mrs Ches vouched for him and the bouncers don’t tend to cross the fairer sex, especially those having consumed their fair share of Merlot. Once inside we do our best to offset the loss of bodily fluids caused by the 45-degree heat and dance moves to Morrisey, The Roses and Joy Division. We are first in, first to the bar, first to the dancefloor, last to bed. G&Ts at Chez Ches round off a valuable night of team bonding, which began much, much earlier with beers on the beach, beers at The Eastfield, beers at Spice Island and beers as we dined…I digress.

Match made in heaven?

Athletes raring to go

As you would expect, we put them in to bat. Skip making a wise choice to field first to ensure that we had enough time to sober up before the long drive (ahem) or walk home, that despite being two short – Satan and Fudger probably delayed due to the long queue of traffic entering into the city hopeful of seeing a semi-professional cricket side in full flow. The Yak steamed in from the Southsea beach end, but with gaps in the field the home team cruised to 90-1 from the first 10 overs, that despite skip bowling a wicket maiden. Having joined the fold Fudger and then Fruiti stemmed the flow of runs and for a short spell we look like a reasonable side. We even take a few wickets, which is a mistake as with every one taken, the batting partnerships strengthen and the ball goes to the boundary that little bit quicker. Mind you we do our best to offset this by dropping numerous chances in the field. “Good drop that one Ches” remarked Skip without any hint of sarcasm whatsoever.

Evil Dave, fresh from one hours sleep and a two-hour drive bowled well and took several wickets (the crazy fool), but crucially we dropped both star batsman before they had got going. Once they did only the sea wall and a 20-foot fence could stop them, although both Anand and The Egg served just enough mystery to keep things respectable. That said 259 for 7 from their 35 hours was a decent haul, fast outfield or not. Time to refuel.

At lunch we are disappointed to hear that we are a day late for the home made cakes, but a cream tea helps us overcome that and we take the opportunity to discuss The Verger’s appearance on the Naked Dating Show, Australia’s imminent disappearance from the upper echelons of the Test rankings, turning Spit Bank Forts into luxury hotels and Ben Ainsley’s chances in the Americas cup. Fascinating stuff, but some of us have homes to walk back to, so we end our banyan with Anand pressganged into opening the batting with Locky.

Sinking ship
Blast. I’ve just remembered that I was going to give this report a nautical feel. I got distracted by the fighting city stuff I inserted at the start. I’ll subtly shoehorn some of that in now, you’ll hardly notice. An early wicket – Locky unluckily playing on – meant we need to batten down the hatches, but Quokkas batsman are overly keen to splice the mainbrace, Fudger for example was a Booby, a seabird with little fear and therefore particularly easy to catch, and at 23 for 3 we are all at sea and seem to be up the poop deck without any bonded jackey.

The Quokkettes are seduced by the electronic scoreboard

`Eagle’ Dave isn’t keen to `kiss the gunners daughter’ though and takes a different tack, smashing anything short into the neighbouring pitch-n-put course, and in doing so scoring a very credible 3 under par. It’s a lovely innings, effortless and brutal in many respects, but just as it looks like he is going to bail us out, Evil is caught and the ship looked sunk. To be fair both Shub and Fruiti offered decent support, Fruit playing one or two lovely shots off his legs and they managed to get us up to 150. But in all honesty we are land lubbers here and they have buoyed (I’m sorry I’ve taken things too far now) with us long enough and with the light going they put us out of our misery, bringing their top class first team spinner on and cleaning up our cat and nine tail in emphatic style. The pitch on leg, take off peg ball being far too good for any of us, me especially.

So a crushing defeat and I feel a little guilty at my terrible matching making, but I guess every now and then it’s good to be taught a lesson and at least maybe one day we’ll be able to say we had bowled at a test batsman, all-be-it one batting wrong handed. In the end we certainly didn’t disgrace ourselves, fighting hard, as all good skates do, especially in the field, but on this occasion I have to admit that Goliath was in a different league to us, fighting blindfold yet still having little problem crushing a groggy David’s fat brother. C’est la vie or as those from Pompey say `whatever mush’.

Let me take this opportunity to thank you all for making the long journey down to the South Coast. I much appreciate your efforts and I hope you enjoyed yourselves and got a flavour for the place. If you are ever visiting Southsea please don’t hesitate to drop me a line. Ches Portsea Island tours and Chez Ches are always open for business. For those off to Sri Lanka have a great time and see you all at the annual dinner.   

Ches.

I’ll just leave this here…