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At a rather breezy, but bright Blue Flames ground, we lost the toss again. Just typical, as the opposition had just 5 players - and with the rather short boundaries, we could have knocked a few boundaries. Anyway…
Their openers were rather lucky with a few shots in the air and slogs, and our bowlers settled down well. Joe Fox seems to have been coached well by Fairless with his nagging line and clever bowling. As for Mulligan the tramp, he managed to get his spinning (ahem) donkey droppers on his area outside off stump and was a bit unlucky. I don’t know how Hansie with his shovel hands dropped one at long off….his hands may still have been wet after having his usual piss behind the sight screen.
Noman bowled rather well on the pretty good surface, clever bowling. Got 2-3 wickets, Colin caught a rather clean catch, rolling on his back to make sure it didn’t slip out.
I thought Hansie bowled like the drain I was fielding on for the first over, but settled down and the boy did good. Laingers bowled as if Mike was standing 1 yard to his left…or was I mistaken?
Anyway, we defended the boundaries well and the fielding was solid….
…Unlike our upper order batting. The total was 108, and the skipper instructed us to play straight - “plenty of time boys!”…. Andy Horrocks departed with an “off with his head!” shot after one over, bringing yours truly in, feeling good (and smelling good), I was wary of Ed’s running from experience, so he does his speciality of picking out a fielder, thinking “that felt good, I will run”..the ball going into the fielders hands and got himself run out. Duncs came in and did his normal attacking batting, hit a good shot, called for a second run, I was a bit slow and got run out – it was my call really and I must say NO more often. Duncs was out soon after, Colin and Noman came to the crease, when it was about 38-4. They were solid and brought the score up to the 90s. Nice play, batting sensibly (as per instructions) and straight mostly. The bowling was nowt special until Dave Swan, the wily old bowler, befuddled us somewhat, the wily old guy had style and made it difficult to get the last 20 or so. Colin was unluckily out in the last over, with 8 to get and unfortunately Joe and Laingers found it hard to get a bat on the experienced bowling of Dave Swan.
So, should have been a win, nearly got there. Good bowling and fielding, but the upper order didn’t quite do it, and we fell short.
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