Harwell International – Victory

A lovely sunny day on Sunday set the scene for our game against our last game against Harwell this year. You should remember that last time we played them we beat them, so Harwell tried harder to get a full side out. Unfortunately, after asking me to provide 2 players for them, they turned up with 10, so we ended up playing 12 vs 11. Graham volunteered to play for them to strengthen their batting. Thanks Graham)

We won the toss and decided to let Harwell bat first. Stewie and Carl (Hippo) Wooloff opened the bowling. Stewie was bowling tightly (5-0-19-0) until he pulled his back and bravely battled through the rest of his last over making more grunting noises than you’ll hear on centre court this week. Strangely, the last over was his best, only giving away 1 run in wides. I think that the grunting was putting off the batsmen.

At the other end, Carl was taking wickets to dismiss the openers. Peachy replaced Stewie and took a wicket in his first over. All was going well with Harwell about 50 for 5. Spirits were high. Nordic was concentrating so hard on stopping a ball from reaching the boundary by the tractor shed that he ran full speed into the fence, and was lucky to escape serious injury (only a bruised thumb).

By this stage Graham (gorgeous) North was settling in and had managed to score a few runs. North Jr had a couple of overs but unfortunately, was not able to get get his father out. Muppet had a go, and a beautiful leg break (4th ball) was too good for Gorgeous to handle, bowling him on middle stump for 26. Muppet finished his spell 8-1-15-4, and with Long Dog bowling spin at the other end, the over rate was increased to a respectable level. After 3 overs Long Dog had not gone for any runs. If only it had stayed like that! Paul Newton took a liking to Duncan’s bowling and starting slapping the ball over the fence on a regular basis. Long Dog went for 8-3-40-0 with 40 runs coming from 12 scoring shots.

Tweekey and Hippo (7.1-0-27-4) finished off the bowling with Harwell declaring when their penultimate wicket fell in the last over before tea. They had managed to score 172. Paul Newton top scoring on 64, and Gorgeous coming second on 26.

The Wooloffs pulled off a very nice tea. Thanks for that.

A challenging target was achieved with ease with only four batsmen required. Colin (POD) Mercer opening well and scoring five beautifully struck boundaries. Who said that he couldn’t get the ball off the square? POD got 24. Long Dog settled in quickly and soon starting moving the ball around the pitch with four lovely sixes finally getting 63 before being cruelly run out.

Elbows started slowly, finding his feet before he started scoring, but finishing with a total of 52 not out. 2 sixes and 4 fours.

Tweekey found form with the bat too and batted with his shades on. This obviously helped as he got 29 not out, hitting the winning runs with five overs to go.

Ok, Harwell’s bowling was not too much to talk about, but there was some fine batting from our team and some lovely individual shots.

Well played guys!