Less of the idyllic Kent countryside this week, more of a Northfleet swamp with added rain and darkness. We started in rain, played in rain and at the end it was raining.
The pavilion is looking pretty good now, aside from the away dressing room not having any light, but now that it is ours we need to look after it.
Anyway, with a view that rain was likely to end the day early we went for a shortened timed game and chose to play two hours each, with tea to be taken in between but, if the weather was good, to turn round straight away. A good plan that the greedy bastards from the oppo spoiled by digging in despite the weather being reasonable. This would cost them later.
We win the toss and invite them to bat. It doesn’t start well as we are short of a player that we could not contact. Binman and Double 0 Dino open and it becomes clear early on that pace off the ball is the way to go. This worked for all their players bar one. The Number 2 was clearly batting at the wrong level and whacked 88 with mostly good shots and big shots (52 of the first 60 on the board). No other player scored more than 20. We took Binman out early and brought on Dartsy who probably bowled as well as he ever has and finished with 1-26. Our fielding was not helping the cause with the three youngest doing their impressions of kittens, being scared of everything that came their way. This included a drop off the good player before he reached 50. They showed better skill with the ball already in hand as Quaker took 1-32 from five overs, Dory 2-36 from seven, and Walkie 2-17 from five. They finished on an imposing 178.
Tea. Weather was as good as it has been all day but the lure of the royal spread before them was clearly too much and the idea of a quick turn around was abandoned. This will come to bite their greedy fat arses later.
We bat and it is getting dark and the rain is coming in. the bowling is friendly and we can look forward to a reasonable go at the total. Skip and Pussy stride out and are ready to put the bowlers to the sword. 4th ball and Skip is walking back, bowled. 0/1. Pussy and Double 0 look good but looks can be deceiving – they are out respectively for 4 and 6. Stumpy and Semtex to forge ahead and, again, look relatively untroubled to the continued friendly bowling. Paul hangs around and shows good support for 7 but Stumpy follows closely for 7 as well (he did join the Big Bash League with a 4). We are way off the target but time is running out for the oppo. Binman is in and finds his timing early. Not only does he hang around, he hits 25* with Walkie somehow holding up the other end despite his many attempts to hit wide balls! A quicker bowler is on but it really is getting dark and with both batsmen and fielders being concerned about seeing the ball, we shake hands.
A battling draw with 25 minutes left in the game. “If only we hadn’t taken tea and turned round straight away” – knobs!
Hot performance of the day to our Vice for his batting.
SB of the Day to Phil who didn’t make it to the game. (Nice picture of the trophy on an empty chair.)
A personal thanks from our skipper for all who managed to stick it out all day with no complaints.
– Skip