Deerest team mates.
Apologies for the tardiness of this week’s report – to be honest, I just forgot. Last week saw us visit the Otford end of Shoreham & Otford, with some old faces returning to the fold – Arthur re-joining us from uni, and Jonny W and Alec Stuart making their first appearances in a couple of years (we think). Goes without saying that I lost the toss, and the oppo skipper asked us to bat first. On paper, that was our weaker suit, with only 3 out and out batsmen and a long tail of bowlers in the team.
It mattered not however, as two of the three got stuck in. John and Arthur opened the batting, and obviously wanted a piece of the action that Jules and George enjoyed the week prior. The pair batted beautifully together, punishing what little bowling there was in a stand of 122. Arthur was his usual busy self, running John into the ground on the first scorcher of the summer. John got to 63 before he fell, tamely top edging a nothing ball that should have gone out the park (in his own words). In his 3 innings so far this year, John has gone 50, golden duck, 50, so we’re hoping that sequence isn’t continued next times he plays. George joined Arthur in the middle for a brief stint, not troubling the scorers sadly after his exquisite innings against Fordcombe. That brought me out to bat, and the bowling seemed to be to my taste, as a quick Vitality T20 blast innings of 25 off 15 continued the positive momentum built by the opening pair. Having reached a 50 run partnership with Arthur, I fell before my time, getting a bit carried away trying to hit over the top again. This brought Alec Stuart out to bat – a man who spent half an hour in the nets looking like Sir Viv only to come out and play like Chris Tavare. His nudging and nurdling didn’t make it through the lush square and outfield, and in the end was undone by the straight ball (something we all know well after Cudham), just after Arthur was undone by the pitch with a ball that didn’t bounce. Jules strolled out, sniffing about red ink masterclass, and looked fluent as ever, picking up from his 80* last week. We was eventually joined (for the last 3 balls) by Al Bromley – like Jules, Al is of the old school train of thought, where we must starve opposition of wickets and therefore points, so he saw out the innings in typically obdurate fashion. We closed on 204, which seemed like more than enough, but S&O were heard talking about being a team of batsmen at multiple occasions, so who knew what the fielding innings would bring…
Long story short, not a lot for them and a lot for us. They had the unfortunate luck of having about 6 injured batsmen, so at no point were there any quick singles, which meant fielding and field placement was relatively straight forward. That didn’t stop us dropping 8 catches. I say again, 8 catches. The run we are on in the field at the moment is shocking, I think we’ve dropped more in the last few games than we did in the last two whole seasons. I won’t name names (mainly because it would double the length of the report) – but we all need to do better.
As for the actual bowling, Michael and Phil S opened up and were incredibly effective. Michael took 3 wickets in what I’m sure he’d admit wasn’t his best spell of bowling, but when he got it, right it was spot on and unplayable. At the other end, Phil proved once again that he is one of the league’s hardest bowlers to score off, going for only 3 runs off his 5 overs. Unlucky not to get a wicket (mainly due to our catching), but he’d help Michael do enough damage to put the match to bed early on. That allowed me to come on and try to bowl myself into a bit of form – there were some turn but not enough consistency, however shit does get wickets and I managed to snag two despite being our least economical bowler on the day. Al B bowled very well again, unlucky not to get more than one wicket in the end, his vipers ideally suited to a pitch that was already misbehaving for the batsmen. Despite the poor catching, the ground fielding was of a high standard, George being at the centre of the action at point. Keen to make up for the duck with the bat, George threatened against some quick singles before the batsmen tried it one to many times and GG threw the stumps down expertly. Then it came time for the young guns – Jonny Westwood (aka right arm David Willey) and Ben Dixon (aka Dominos Dixon). Ben had mistakenly brought along a gaggle of non-cricketing chums, who despite their kindness in offering us pizza and cookies, took it upon themselves to heckle his every move. The rowdy anti-fans were clearly in his head early on as he struggled to find the pitch, but we all knows what happens when he does – he rips it. And he did just that to confuse one of the batters into a plinked shot over the top, which we held onto for a change. It left Big Jon, steaming in from the top end, to finish the job – taking the final wicket in impressive fashion, clean bowling the tail ender with a fast full straight delivery, every batters’ nightmare as we know. S&O were all out for 85 (15 of which were extras), so we won handsomely by a margin of 119 runs in the end.
Awards time – our opening pair put the game out of reach between them, but the MVP award this week goes to Arthur, who in his first game of the season, scored most runs while holding the innings together and followed it with a lot of effort in the field. Well played Arthur.
The TFC award – he’s already claimed it and I don’t have a lot of reasons to disagree so thanks for coming Alec Stuart. Thoroughly appreciate you coming down and keen to have you back in the team again this season, but the failure to meet such lofty batting expectations and the dolly you dropped sealed you fate on this occasion.
Maverick and Goose
We move on to week 7 tomorrow, on the road again at Shipbourne. Let’s hope the weather improves and we have a dry enough day to get a game in. See you there and in the meantime – swing true Sennocke.