Although not an official Firvale CC tour a significant percentage of the tour party was made up of people with Firvale CC connections. The tour was organized by Roy Hibbert and the tour party was known as Roy's Heroes. Four matches had been arranged prior to our departure on Tuesday 11th February, although another fixture was to be added during the tour.

We set off from Pond Street at around 8.00am, making good progress until we found out the M1 was closed just prior to the M25 junction. Much debate and advice on the route to be taken was in evidence, but excellent map reading by Nudge circumnavigated the hold up and we arrived at Heathrow airport with time to spare. The flight was uneventful, specially for Jake who appeared to sleep for the entire flight (11 hours!).

After landing at Cape Town we boarded the coach to the two hotels. The Needham family managing to leave their camera on the coach. On arriving at our respective hotels it became apparent that swimming pools in Cape Town hotels are a luxury. The pool at the Cape Milner being about 4M square and the pool at the Victoria junction about 20M by 1.5M. As well as the odd shape it was built in the middle of the car park!The first match was against Rygersdal CC about 10 minutes walk from the Newlands cricket ground. Click here for a full match report, suffice to say that we lost, however, Reece substituting for the opposition got Roy out bowled! The after match fines ceremony was taken a step further by our hosts, their fines included drinking beer rather than paying money. Needless to say we had plenty of fines. They were so impressed by our drinking that they invited us back for a beer match the following Tuesday.

The following day saw our second match against Milnerton. On arriving at the ground we were shocked on two counts, how windy it was and the state of the wicket. The wicket was almost black in colour and was a crumbling mess at one end. However, to be fair, it played a lot better than it looked. Click here for a full match report. Once again plenty of beer was consumed in the club house along with the fines.

The extra match arranged against Rygersdal CC took place on Tuesday, however, almost the entire tour party was suffering from the runs (or worse). We still managed to field a side (just) for what turned out to be a very, very friendly game of cricket. We drew lots for the batting and bowling order, we fielded first and were less than impressive in the field as we all moved about at Swifty's pace. After 15 overs we had a drinks break, our hosts supplying us with beer, we were all feeling so rough that we left most of it!! When it came to our turn to bat they turned on the lights and we all had a first experience of playing day/night cricket. For the record we won the match but more by the design of the opposition captain than our own performance. Part way through our inning Reece was 'ill' on the balcony (and later in the taxi on the way back to the hotel). Shep (who scored some runs) managed to hold onto his tea until getting to the hotel steps where he parted with it.

Due to the state of the tour party there was some doubt about the match taking place on the Wednesday, however, we managed to get 11 body's on the pitch at Durbanville. Click here for a full match report. Due to everyone's delicate nature the after match activities were kept short and we returned to the hotels early. On the way back to the hotels Roy announced that we had managed to get some tickets for England v Pakistan match at Newlands on the coming Saturday. This cheered everyone up and gave us something really special to look forward to.

The only problem with the tickets was that they were not all together, so we split into four groups scattered around the Newlands ground. England appeared not to bat very well in posting a total of around 250. In the event it proved to be more than enough as England bowled Pakistan out for around 160. It was without doubt a memorable day and set us in good spirits for our last match.

The day after the England match saw us at Fish Hoek to play the last match of the tour. For once the opposition turned out a team that looked older than ours! Roy won the toss and elected to bat for the first time on tour. Click here for a full match report. We managed to finish the tour off with a win despite some good batting from our hosts, Reece had a bowl and should have had a wicket as two catches went down in his first over, he also took a good catch to dismiss their opening bat.

We had an end of tour dinner at The Blues restaurant in Camps Bay on the Tuesday nigh prior to our departure on Wednesday. Several bottles of wine (17) were consumed and this had something to do with John Nichol being thrown in the pool on our return to the Cape Milner hotel for Roy's end of tour speech.

The tour was a great success and Cape Town is certainly a place worth revisiting. We have learnt a lot about the place and there is no doubt that we will do things slightly differently if we visit again. The location of the hotels were not ideal, a base at Camps Bay would be excellent. However, these slight niggles did not detract too much from the tour, the tour party being split over two hotels probably was more of a problem but with the world cup this could not be avoided and would not be a problem in the future.

Finally, if anyone wishes to write a tour report I will be happy to post to the web-site or if anyone has any interesting stories, happenings I will be happy to include.

Here's to the next tour...... Many Thanks to ROY