Last night the entire Aussie cricket team along with their wives and families were invited to attend the Albion v Villarreal FC pre-season friendly at the AMEX Community Stadium in East Sussex. A mid-afternoon thunderstorm meant that stumps had been called early at the cricket so about twenty of us accepted the invitation to attend. There we enjoyed a lovely evening complete with a buffet dinner before being bussed 'home' at around 10.30pm.
Thankfully today the Brighton sunshine was back to it's best and like each of the previous mornings, a group of us had decided to walk to the ground from our hotel - about a 25 minute stroll. We had been spoilt by the Sussex County Cricket Club's hospitality all weekend and today was no exception with our own marquee (generously sized for Romy to have plenty of room to crawl around in), our own drinks waiter (as a non-cricket fan he was bored silly making the odd cup of tea and coffee) and plentiful platters of food smothered in pastries, scotch eggs, pork pies and even fancy chocolates.
The match ended in a draw with my dear husband - and captain for the tour match - finishing on an unbeaten 77. At the conclusion of play, the team, their partners, families and support staff were again extended an invitation to stay at the cricket ground for an evening barbeque hosted by the club and much to our collective delight, everybody stayed on basking in the glorious, warm and sunny evening.
Tomorrow marks the official end of our visitors period, although many of the girls have opted to stay on for a while longer (this is permissible by Cricket Australia but at our own personal expense). Those of us flying home will be escorted back to Heathrow first thing in the morning and the rest of our tour group will move on to Manchester for the third Ashes Test later this week.
