Freezing to Victory

 Another friendly game today, this time against our old friends from Upton, who we have a long association with and indeed have several players who have turned out for our club - the vice versa also applies. 

The normal captain was away on baseball duties, although he did turn up to watch us later on while eating pizza, so we played under a new captain who is the committee member who has done a fantastic job of getting a full programme of Sunday fixtures for us this season since we dropped out of the Sunday league. Luckily he wasn't mad at me for being a few minutes late as I had some personal stuff to attend to in a hurry. 

He even let me have my choice of bowling ends, which meant yay! No more wind in my face!

It was a high scoring fixture, played on a very slow wicket with an outfield the size of Botswana and in temperatures the exact opposite. It was freezing out there in the wind, especially later on when the sun was setting. My hands were purple. 

I actually bowled a bit better than yesterday, if a little too short at times, and proved to be hard to hit on the low wicket, which I was pleased about as I was mainly bowling to a guy who went on to make a fine century and I'm sure was expecting to be able to hit me into the middle of next week. I didn't take any wickets, but our new players for the fixture bowled very well and did indeed take a few wickets. It helped we got their other dangerous batsman out for not very many.

That being said, they still racked up 219 for 5 at over 5 an over, which as I said to the captain was odd as no-one had bowled badly. Shows how good the century was I suppose. 

Normally this would be far too many for us, but we had a rather stronger team than we normally do for this fixture, including our returning Division A batsman who we all felt was the key to winning the match. 

Rightly, as it turned out.

We made a solid, steady start but found oursevles in a spot of a pickle at 50 or so for 2. Mr Div A, and another player returning to play regularly and was also in fine for, started slowly, but soon began to take the bowling apart although to score a 6 on that ground you'd need to load the ball into a howitzer. I had the pleasure of umpiring for a large chunk of their partnership of around 150, although the pleasure was slightly offset by the feeling that I was umpiring in a chest freezer. 

The star bat retired after he made his way to the century, and with about 20 to go the match was won. A very fine victory to chase down 219.

Augurs well for our new Sunday incarnation.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 25.04.21