Match report
With only nine Whalers arriving by the allotted time and South West
trains playing its usual silly buggers we realised that the game would start
with only 3 of it’s prized “four paced pronged attack”. The success of the
match hinged on the skipper for the day, Mildon, winning the toss…
He lost. The Whalers we sent out into the field during the hottest part
of the day - luckily with a fair breeze in the air.
Osgood and Judd opened the bowling with good pace off varied length
run-ups, although Osgood appeared to struggle to find his line with many
lengthy overs as the extras total crept up. The opening batsmen started
strongly and were amassing a good total. The skipper decided it was time to
bring himself on and a wicket quickly fell with a prod to short mid-off. The
heat had clearly got to some of the players heads with plenty of profanities
being bounded around and some early wild fielding. Another wicket fell shortly
with Judd clean bowling the no3. (Andy L). The no1 (Peter M) was still looking
strong.
The fourth member of the “pronged attack” was seen sauntering across
from the changing rooms after half an hour of play, and suddenly gaining a bout
of enthusiasm attempted to join the field of play during the middle of an over.
Khalil was installed at fine leg and soon joined the bowling attack. As usual
Khalil’s bowling was accurate and hard to play removing 2 wickets over the
course of his 8 overs at the expense of only 17 runs.
With one of the openers (no1 - Peter M) still in place the Whalers
resorted to removing batsmen around him until he finally fell as one of
Osgood’s 3 wickets - for 74 runs.
The highlight of the fielding performance was a one handed catch by
Ollie Bayne behind the stumps after moving one way (not sure why) and then
swiftly shifting his weight and snatching the ball from the sky.
After 40 overs Elthorne had been restricted to 175-9 - a total that we
felt we could attack particularly with the short pavilion side boundary. The total
would have looked even better if it weren’t for the 40 extras (including 20
wides and 10 no-balls/beamers), but this was made up by some tight fielding
(despite overthrows) and good field placement.
So we set off on the long walk to tea eagerly awaiting the sausage rolls
and ham sandwiches that awaited us. Having sampled the most of the team I can
recommend the Montana Triple Chocolate Bars (see http://www.rivifoods.com/ProductMontana.shtml
for info. Hopefully they will send me some free ones!) - as one Whaler
commented “There’s a ‘ole lot o’ mountain in that biscuit“.
Back to the cricket. The opening pair of Dickinson and Osborne strode
confidently to the crease. After Osgood signaled 2 consecutive wides Dickinson
got off the mark with a four, with the run rate now at 3.6 an over we felt that
we had got off to a good start, 5 dot balls followed, to become somewhat
prevalent during Al’s innings, the run rate was down to 6 an over.
The opening pair made good progress and even celebrated their growing
partnership by dancing in the middle of the wicket. The opposition weren’t so
bowled over by this show of mutual affection and tried to run them out, luckily
they just finished dancing in time to return to the opposite crease.
After surviving a scare when the ball was edged just over the stumps and
straight through the wicket keeper to hit a small child frolicking on the
boundary Oz kept the score ticking. The short boundary was utilised more than
once. Al supported at the other end dealing with an inordinate amount of dot
balls.
After a while Oz got “bored” and decided to hit out further, after
coming down the track he managed to pick out the fielder at long on, the ball
was cleanly struck and the fielder managed to hold on well to a ball that would
have flown over his head. The distraught fielder then looked down to see his
feet over the boundary line. Buoyed on by his good fortune Oz continued in this
fashion before being caught on the boundary a few balls later after scoring 75
off 65 balls. The score stood at 119-1.
This brought Forte to the crease and after adding a few runs he fell
cheaply for 12, having put on 23 runs with
With Nelson and Kirkness at the crease the talk in the middle was that
we could finish the game off. We spoke too soon and both wickets fell in quick
succession after some aggressive batting - both bowled with head most
definitely in the clouds and bat most definitely not anywhere near the ball.
So it fell to Bayne and Dennis to finish off the game, with Bayne 0 not
out after facing one ball and Dennis hitting the winning runs.
Whalers win by 5 wickets.
Key stats:
Osgood 8 ov - 2 mdns - 26 runs - 3 wkts
Khalil - 8 ov - 3 mdns - 17 runs - 2 wkts
Osborne 75 (off 65)
Man of Match: Ahmed -
bowling spell
Muppet: Dickinson & Osborne -
Shall we dance? Clearly the answer was “yes”
Fines of £40.05 raised - proceeds to Sports Relief.