The Anarchist Vs Capitalist Midnight Cricket Matches are an opportunity for two opposing cultures and world views to take to the crease and prove their worth like Ladies and Gentlemen. Held in the prestigious grounds of the City Of London the matches begin at the stroke of midnight, as all magical things should.
The evening begins with the Space Hijackers heading into a City pub in full cricket whites, eager to find opposition. Sticking out like a sore thumb in the sea of pinstripes and expensive shirts, the anarchist team tends to draw the attention of the socialising capitalists. Plentiful drinking ensues and by closing time, the two opposing cultures have developed a hearty banter "You're a bunch of job shy layabouts", "You're a bunch of money obsessed back stabbers". Finally the bar staff give up and declare closing time, at which point a representative of the Hijackers took centre stage.
"Ladies and Gentlemen of the world of Capitalism, you're time has come! We the dirty anarchists hereby challenge you to a game of cricket outside on the streets. Draw your team together and lets see what you're made of, Long live Anarchy, Death to Capitalism, Outside Now!"
Let's meet the teams
The Space Hijackers anarchist cricket team is as yet unbeaten, whether this is due to pure skill, worthiness of cause, or just the fact that they can generally out drink and out party any opposition is yet to be proved. Playing in light and dark blue the team rejects hierarchical batting orders, umpires decisions and the authority of anyone claiming of ownership of the pitch we are playing on. They stand for fair play, and when out will admit to it, team play is important as is ensuring there is a kicking sound system.
The Capitalist Cricket team is comprised of a group of traders and bankers drawn from the drinking dens of EC1. Playing in designer labels with bespoke trimmings, they reject the notions of team play preferring a dog eat dog system of organisation. As with various international cricket matches it seems that logo's and brands are more important to their kit than the clean lines of test cricket clothing. The capitalists tend to come undone when playing cricket as they often resort to cheating and glory hunting, even sinking as low as catching their own players out in order to claim personal victory.
MATCH REPORT
The 6th Midnight Cricket Cup Test Match took place on a warm sunny evening at the end of May. The Hijackers headed into the city around Liverpool Street station and began to mingle in the various sleazy city boy pubs in the area. Dirty Dicks was our first port of call, however it was soon decided that we needed to stoop much lower to find the category of city boys we were after. Thankfully next door laid a perfect "all bar one" chain pub, complete with cheesy DJ and posturing suited clientele. At closing time, we asked the Dj to turn down the music so that we could make an, ahem, 'Birthday announcement'. Before long, the capitalists were busy forming a team to take on the unwashed anarchist scum bags and try their luck at winning the prestigious trophy.
We had decided to return to a cricket ground at Spitalfields used on one of our previous outings, as it laid right on the boundary of the City Of London and the East End, a perfect place for a clashing of our cultures. The pitch lays in the newly redeveloped Spitalfields Market, an area which after massive local opposition was bulldozed and turned into a huge office block. Many small local businesses were turfed out of the historic market place in order to make way for a new 'market street' complete with upmarket chain stores and designer shops. As the two teams lined up, a pound coin was tossed, and duly stolen by the capitalist captain, this set the tone for the rest of the match.
The capitalists opted to bat first, so the hijackers busied ourselves with setting the field and ensuring that the sound system was banging out cricket themed tunes. Before long the Spitalfields security team turned up and started getting their knickers in a twist about us playing on private land, a first brush with authorities for the Capitalists team. After a bit of debate, it was decided to move the match onto the 'public' street just 3 meters away, this satisfied the security team and the game continued.
After a stirling start from the Capitalist top batsmen we were beginning to get a little worried, however as we gradually moved down their batting order their team disintegrated. This brought out the ugly competitive side of their team, with their captain resorting to pushing our fielders over as they were about to catch people out amongst other tactics. Soon however our work was done and the hijackers took to the crease to bat.
As we started racking up the runs, and sinking the drinks, a realisation came over the capitalists that they may be on the losing team. This caused even more amusing antics from them, with members trying to seek glory through switching teams. We tried explaining the benefits of working in a team as opposed to going for solo glory, however they weren't interested.
As with most hijacker events rule following and strict discipline wasn't at the fore of our minds and before long, those not batting were exploring the other potentials of the pitch. A giant tent structure was just off to the side of the pitch, which it turned out made a rather good slide/trampoline. Obviously the best course of action was to move the match to the tent top and attempt cricket whilst bouncing.
Surprisingly we were joined by the capitalist traders who took great glee in running to the top of the tent, then sliding down. As you can imagine security were onto us pretty sharpish, and started shouting up at the cricketers to get down. It was whilst watching the capitalist captain attempt somersaults on a makeshift trampoline as the security called up at him, that we realised anarchy had indeed won again!
Before the police turned up to spoil the fun we decided to switch venues, moving east into Brick Lane. Here undisturbed we broke out the leather cricket balls and cranked up the sound systems (another had joined us by now). The match resumed in full swing, whilst off to one side a street party erupted. The time must have been about 3am and the various trendy east end clubs had started kicking people out, who then poured onto the streets and like flies to the light drifted to our sound systems.
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Daylight started approaching, and Friday night began to turn into Saturday morning. It was at this point that agent PA pointed out it was the last day to legally drink on the London Underground, due to a ridiculous new law from our buffoon mayor Boris. A call went out to take to the trains and hold a Circle Line Party on the first train of the day! At 5:30am we gathered our mob and set off for Liverpool Street Station...
We were going to toast the Circle Line the only way that Hijackers know how. Veterans of Circle Line Parties since we first started putting them on nearly 10 years ago, we took the fledgling capitalists (who were keeping up with our drinking admirably) to lose their CLP virginity.
At 7am after a lap of the circle, plenty of pole dancing and a spot of limbo we finally headed off to rest our weary heads. The Midnight Cricket Trophy was still safely in the hands of the Anarchists, the tube had been toasted farewell, and several city workers had been taken on an all night hijacker rampage, tasted the sweetness of defying authority, and learnt to do back flips whilst trespassing on public sculpture. Job done...