Not so roaring 40's
Disclaimer
To those of you who wait anxiously each week for the match report, I apologise for it's late delivery this week was is due to pressure of work having returned from holiday to find my desk piled high. To Justin, who tells me he finds my reports overlong - don't read it!
We
had unknown opposition this week as our usual opponents were forced to
cancel but the gentlemen of Sheen Park proved to be a very pleasant bunch
with only one defect - they like to play 40 over cricket. Their captain
and I undertook a protracted negotiation made all the longer because we
were being so polite, to decide which form of cricket we would play and
eventually agreed that whoever won the toss could choose. I lost the toss!
They elected to bat and went off at a rate of knots. Their captain in
particular struck the ball high and hard and we were not helped by the
fact that we put both openers down early and they went on to establish
an opening partnership of in excess of 50. Alex was commanding some respect
but all others were put to the sword and due to the nature of the cricket
Alex had to come off after 5 overs to hold back some overs for the end.
Nick Parkinson however settled into a good length and rhythm and finally
had the left handed opener caught by Brian Hallam but Shaun the captain
was continuing on his merry way and soon reached 50. I came on and found
the ball was doing a bit and succeeded in removing no's 3 , 4 and Shaun
the captain to a good catch at long on by Toby.
Cudworth I and Alex bowled the last 10 overs of the innings and although
one of the later batsman struck about him to good effect, including an
enormous 6 of Ian, we were pretty pleased to hold them to 202 for 6 off
their 40 overs.
Our innings started badly in the face of some accurate opening bowling
combined with a wicket which was again misbehaving. Steve Reece opening
with Justin was caught with the score on 2 and Justin and I then went
through what felt like a long period of consolidation when we could do
little but survive. The score was going nowhere and after 11 overs we
had only 15 runs.
Jus then was LBW trying to pull a full toss and Alex fresh from his 100
last week advanced down the wicket, played a defensive shot to one that
stopped a bit and lofted it to short mid wicket. At 26 for 3 we were in
trouble and although I started to play a few shots, were already a long
way behind the clock. I then top edged a sweep to be out for 19 and with
only Edgar of the front line batsmen left, the shortcoming of this type
of cricket was apparent as we clearly could not win and therefore with
less than half our overs bowled, the game was effectively over with no
incentive for the opposition to bowl us out.
Edgar played some fine shots to make 33 and bring some respectability
to the score, the Chairman continued his run of form with 9 not out but
otherwise, to borrow a phrase from Howard "they asked for 40 we'll
give them 40 overs" and we simply played out time to end on 124 for
9 off our 40 overs. Technically therefore we lost by 78 runs.
Sheen Park were a nice bunch of guys who played in the right spirit and
seemed keen to play us next year which I think we would be pleased to
do if we can play 'proper' cricket