Scorecard
It was probably the hottest day of the year so far as Coton
took on Elmdon at The Recreation Ground last Saturday. The sun beat down from a cloudless sky as we
took the field. Dan took up the reigns
as captain again, obviously not too impressed with the useless tosser that had
been standing in the previous week. As
has been stated too often, with the one ball per game rule for this competition
winning the toss is important as teams will invariably bowl first. Indeed Safwan will give you his latest
theories on how the rule should be changed if you have a couple of hours to
spare. On a dry wicket Matt and Dan opened the bowling. The wicket was later to receive a “bad”
rating by the opposition skipper.
Probably just sour grapes for the methodical dismantling of the
opposition by a Coton team that is now 2nd in the league. True there was a bit of crumbling on the footholds but it was hardly the dustbowl that drove midwest farmers off their land in the Great Depression.
The first dozen or so overs only yielded little over one run
per over but no wickets. Both Dan and
Matt beat the bat repeatedly and when they didn’t it the batsmen showed little
inclination to aggression. The
breakthrough almost came when the ball was clipped through Scotch’s hands at
square leg. As he nursed his sore
fingers, Scotch made a very implausible claim that the drop was deliberate to
keep the slow scoring batsman in. Scotch
and Richard got the call as change bowlers and although the rate picked up a
little it was still very, very slow going.
It was nothing to do with the pitch, just accurate bowling and
conservative batting. Cameron Black –
handed the gloves in the absence of Alastair – was the busiest person on the
field.
Richard finally made the breakthrough, with two wickets in
two balls. The first a plumb LBW removing
the first of the atrophied opening batsmen and the second bowled his
replacement. This seemed to go off the
pads and it was a few seconds before he realised that it had clipped the off
stump and toppled the bail. These were
the last two balls of the over and despite crowding the young batsman with the
first of the next over he easily survived.
Scotch wasn’t making much headway for once – despite the
batsmen being of the right age – and Rob took a turn. Richard took a third wicket and then Rob joined
the fun bowling another. Its always
entertaining to see a batman swing in the direction of midwicket only to have
off stump pegged back. One of the young
Elmdon team had decided that this was a baseball game. With three successive balls from Rob there
were huge swings in the direction of cow corner. On each delivery the ball nestled into
Cameron’s waiting hands. A cry of “strike
three, you’re out” from the frustrated bowler held now sway with the umpire who
even now was chewing on the aforementioned sour grapes.
Richard then grabbed a fourth wicket, but was unable to
complete the 5-for with the last two balls of his spell. A case of jug avoidance, I think!
Dan decided enough of the good batsmen were out to have
another go and immediately struck with the one delivery that had a noticeably odd
bounce and grabbed a wicket. There were
also wickets for the returning Matt and finally for Scotch. The innings ended as Scotch hit wickets direct
with a throw from fine leg removing the Elmdon #10. They batted one short and ended up on 94 all
out.
After a fine tea, courtesy of Richard, that contained not
one grape sour or otherwise, we batted.
Adam opened with Gabriel and we were making good progress
until Adam slapped a delivery that was a marginal full toss no-ball to
point. Gabriel had looked determined to
carry his bat for a nought not out but also produced a couple of excellent
boundaries before missing a straight one.
A feature of the innings was that Elmdon had already
switched their keepers by the sixth over and were to swap again before the
end. Probably all the bad bounces on the
bad wicket were causing problems: nothing to do with ability of course.
Bobby Elmes was promoted to number three after his fine
knock last week and with Dan coming in at four runs accumulated quickly despite
the former’s nimble footwork turning wides into dot balls. Dan smacked some lusty pulls counterpointed
with drives. Bobby produced his repertoire
of glances and cuts. It was only a
matter of how quickly we would pass the target not whether we would very
quickly. It was something of a surprise
when Dan succumbed to an innocuous straight delivery (he couldn’t even blame
the pitch this week), shortly afterwards followed by Bobby. By this time we were within a dozen or so of
the target and Safwan was making quick work of closing the gap.
Richard came in having suffered ducks in both his previous
knocks and finished the innings off with a cut for 4 through point.
We had taken less than half the allowed overs knocking the
runs off – presumably we hadn’t found the wicket too bad!
A comprehensive win then, built on accurate (and Richard’s
case, a penetrative 4-19) bowling. That
was supported by better fielding than the previous week – the highlight being
Scotch’s run out. The batting then
produced with everyone, including Mr Extras, chipping in.
Next week is a blank week in the league and while we have
our club day we’ll be watching out for results elsewhere. Of the 4 teams above us going into the last
match, 3 were defeated. Only Thriplow –
whose one loss was against us – separate us from the top of the league. 5 games to go: can we do it? Every point will be important.
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2 comments:
As opening bowler/ pitch preparer I was particularly annoyed they put their batting woes 100% down to pitch and 0% to bowling!
and so you should be. I hardly saw one ball misbehave all day (just the one that Dan took a wicket with).
on the other hand I did see some good bowling.
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