The Winner By Jim Buckley. Long weak shadows played across the grass, signifying that the day and the match was drawing to an end. Midges flittered around the heads of the players causing them to flail their arms in the air in a useless attempt to dispel the airborne invasion. As the players crouched, poised ready for instant action, the bowler paced out his run for the final over. He stopped, dragged his spiked boot over the scorched grass to mark his place and turned to face down the wicket. He glared hard at the batsman, tossed the ball casually from his left hand to his right, curled his talon like fingers around the seam and took one slow pace forward. Little Joe adjusted his rimless glasses, blinked hard and peered at the huge mountain of a man who was beginning to thunder towards him. For a moment little Joe thought of just dropping his bat and running off the pitch. After all he had only come to watch his work's team play, not to join in. Instead, because his team was a man short, he was number eleven and his team needed just three runs to win with only one over to go. Joe had tried to turn down the invitation to play, but his work mates had persuaded him that it would be O.K. They said that he wouldn't actually have to bat, just be out there. Things hadn't worked out like they'd said though. Somehow and Joe hadn't a clue how, somehow Joe was left to face this brute of a man who seemed to be taller and bigger than anyone he had ever seen or even imagined in his most frightening nightmare. Somehow, Joe had been left to face a very hard cricket ball that seemed to hurtle down the pitch at thousands of miles an hour. Joe gripped the bat half way down the handle and nervously tried to position it in front of himself as some form of protection. His thin, slight body trembled in anticipation and dread as the man mountain careered across the grass, his face contorted in a maniacal grimace. The ball, threatening to break the sound barrier, hurtled towards Joe, struck the shoulder of his bat, flew up and over the wicket keeper's despairing gloved hand and landed with a crash half way to the boundary. "RUN!" screamed the other batsman and spectators alike, as two fielders converged on the ball. Joe dropped his heavy bat and ran, as if all the goblins of hell were after him. Joe sensed rather than saw the ball being thrown towards him. As he ran Joe turned and saw the ball, which seemed to have taken on a face of a screaming skull, streaking towards his head. Joe tried to duck, tripped and crashed into the stumps at the other end as the ball howled past and headed for the boundary. "RUN!" yelled his colleague as somehow Joe managed to scrabble to his feet and dashed headlong back from where he had come. Panting and visibly shaking from the exertion and fright, Joe half collapsed next to his discarded bat. Although Joe never played cricket he knew enough about the game to know that he had scored two precious runs for his team and now the scores were level. Gasping for breath and shaking violently Joe picked up his chunk of willow and with a determination that startled himself, took guard once again as the man mountain strode back to his mark. The next three balls hurtled down even faster but the wildness of the bowling sacrificed the accuracy and all three whizzed harmlessly by. Two balls to go and still one run to get. Man mountain steadied himself, charged towards the crease and let fly straight at Joe's head. Joe tried to duck out of the way, completely forgetting that he had a bat to hit the ball with and the ball snicked his protruding ear and drew blood. Dabbing his stinging ear, Joe saw the blood. Glaring fiercely at the man mountain now stood just a few yards away, Joe gritted his teeth and mustering all the venom and hate that he could, Joe took up his stance for the final ball. Joe was determined that he would strike the last ball and win the match for his team. Blood had been drawn, his blood and someone was going to pay. Cheers and shouts of joy from his team mates crashed into Joe's anaesthetized brain as they lifted him on their shoulders and carried him off the pitch as Joe clutched each stinging hand under his armpits. As the final ball hurtled towards him, Joe had shut his eyes tightly and swung the heavy bat in a vicious arc towards where he thought the ball would be and with the Gods on his side willow met leather in a tremendous collision sending stinging vibrations up the handle and into his boney hands. The ball streaked away, faster than the eye could follow, slammed into man mountain's shin and careered away and over the boundary. Joe had won the match for his work's team.