Cold Ash – Defeat

Yesterdays game eventually started at about 3.15pm after both teams waited for the opposition to turn up at their home grounds. Eventually, after a couple of phone calls I managed to persuade Cold Ash to come to our ground and play. With the threat of bad weather on the way, and the late start, we tried to get as much cricket in as possible by playing a 20 over game but having 8 ball overs so as to have less of a delay in play.

Cold Ash won the toss and decided to let us bat, and that’s what we attempted to do; not very successfully. As a team, we batted poorly, giving away 6 catches to Cold Ash and committing the cardinal sin of not batting out the overs. Our top scorers were: me with 20, Alan “Raffles” Mercer with 15 not out and Andrew Barrett on 14. Nobody else managed to get into double figures. 4 people, who shall remain nameless, were out for ducks.

With the last wicket falling in the 18th over, Cold Ash were left with an easy target of 83 to win. Their openers together put on 50 before their first wicket fell. I dropped a skied ball at long-on, completely misjudging it and having to run backwards and attempt a one handed catch at the last minute. The fortunate batsman was on about 10 and went on to get a half century. Stewie “Angel” Bulpitt and David “Muppet” Henson bowled well, but unfortunately didn’t manage to get any wickets. Andrew Barrett and Tim “Tweekey” Weekes also bowled tightly but were outclassed by the opposition batsmen. Tweekey got our only wicket, an LBW. Peachy attempted a superb run-out shy at the stumps and hit them with, what looked to us like, the batsman was still out of his ground. However, the umpire disagreed, so no wicket.

Cold Ash achieved 83 in their 16th over. If we had batted better, we may have had a chance of winning. We now get a chance later on in the season to remind Cold Ash how well we normally play. This is likely to be a home game (to be confirmed), as they can’t play at their ground when we have the return fixture, due to a village fete.

Man of the Match: Me, for being top scorer. I don’t think I deserve it though as I dropped an important catch.
Champagne Moment: Peachy, for the run-out throw.
Pig’s Ear: Olly, for a difficult dropped diving catch that looked like it was in slow motion, unfortunately the ball wasn’t in slow motion.