A Winning Start at Upton

 Finally, after terrible weather and cancelled games, the Sunday season, and thus my season, got underway with what always used to be our traditional curtain raiser against our very good friends from Upton cricket club, on their beautiful small ground up on the hill from the village.

It was a lovely sunny day, to the extent that horrible milk bottle legs could be revealed to the world. 

Arriving early in order to make our new young players welcome, I had time to explore the ground, and the beautiful orchard behind it into which many a ball has been hit. The apple trees are in full blossom, and the bees from the hives at one end were getting busy. 

I didn't make the mistake of going to have a closer look at the hives, as I got chased off by an angry bee when I tried that before. 

Upton batted first, as we thought we were a bit light on batting and wanted to make a day of it. As it turned out, Upton struggled on a tricky slow wicket, and although the boundaries were short, the outfield was slow so runs were hard to come by, especially as our bowling was so good. Events started slowly, but when we brought two of our debutants, one a talented youngster, another a guy who had been talked into coming back to cricket by the chairman but hadn't got round to getting some spikes yet so was bowling in Sketchers.

Within about twenty minutes, they had taken five wickets between them, the young lad taking a stinging catch as well as taking their first senior wickets ever. 

Time for a tactical bowling change. Surely bringing myself on would even the game up a bit, as I fully expected to get hit into the nearby fields a few times. 

Well, as it turned out, that only happened once. I bowled well enough, although my two wickets were as usual taken with my worst two deliveries, and the field I had set myself after observations made at net practice, turned out to be completely wrong. I bowled a little two short at times, but I did get a bit of turn and beat the batters a few times. 

Meanwhile, at the other end, another young debutant was proving to be impossible to hit.

The decision was then "taken by myself" and not at all by the chairman who was acting as a usurper skipper on the grounds of my tactical incompetence, to end the nonsense by bringing on the proper off spinner, who promptly wiped out the tail enders to bowl out Upton for 89.

Talking over an excellent tea, we thought this would be no easy chase in these conditions, and indeed the chairman, reluctantly opening the batting, was wiped out first ball, and other wickets fell rapidly until we were 17 for 6. Luckily, the second team captain and also our esteemed groundsman, and our senior resident geographer on two hour sleep, combined to see us home with a brilliant partnership of 70 odd, one with big hitting - poor old tree at one end took a fearful thwack, and stern defence from the other. 

Good job, as the batters waiting to go in, myself included, did not feel terribly confident of making any runs at all. 

In all a lovely day, capped with a pub visit, which went on all night for some!

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 06.05.24