Like a well-placed fielder, rural South Canterbury cricketers have caught a group of thieves red-handed after their clubhouse was burgled.
The thieves had made off with about $500 worth of alcohol, $50 of coins and loose change, sausages and meat patties, a gear bag, baggy green hats, caps, a cricket bat, two stereos and about 20 years of records books.
Members of the Glenavy cricket club reported Monday night's burglary to police the next morning, but by the afternoon they had chased down their stolen belongings.
A club spokesperson, who asked not to be named, said they already had a rough idea of where their things might have gone.
"Stuff had been going missing in the area for months ... they'd even pinched the pet rabbit from the school and someone in the community had seen them carrying the rabbit hutch from the school back to this house," he said.
So, some members of the club decided to bowl up to the house.
"We went round there, a few of the boys - about eight of us - and asked for our gear back. They wouldn't let me into the house to start off with."
He said they had recorded their attempt to enter the house - just knocking on the door - to avoid getting in trouble with the law themselves.
He said they could see those in the house had been drinking.
"And I asked the joker, 'are you drinking our bloody Woodstock?' [bourbon] and he said 'no, no I bought it from the pub'. And I said 'well, where's the box that it came in' and he didn't have an answer and it took him a wee while to think of something and then he said he burnt them.
"We were running out of options and then next minute one of his mates had turned up in the car and I said 'could we go in?' and he said yes.
"So I went straight into one of the rooms, and there's four crates of beer, two bloody boxes full of Woodstock, I looked under the bed and there's our cricket bat and all our hats.
"And that's when we realised these buggers had taken all our stuff ... they didn't know what to do, they weren't going to try and stop us so I took the stuff back outside and told the boys to ring the cops."
The cricket bat was found in the backyard. Photo: RNZ / YouTube
He said a couple of guys from the club went back into the house to retrieve the rest of their things after the police arrived.
"But there's still a lot of stuff in the house that belonged to members of the community there'd be at least eight TVs, there was a kayak, bikes, lawnmowers, gardening equipment."
He said they had not recovered the books, however.
"Lucky I haven't stood too many runs in the last few seasons.
"Maybe they used them to light their fires ... they're the sort of scumbags where that'd be something that they would do."
