Garsington II – Home – OCA League

Sorry about delay in putting together the match report for the Garsington game, it would be great to get some volunteers to help out with writing the match reports. There is plenty for each captain to already be doing for the teams and club…

Garsington, I’d say the “old enemy”, but they aren’t really. They are simply the team who won the league last year, meaning playing them again now is a good signpost on whether we are improving as a club. Last season we lost comfortably to them in the first tie, and drew the second, almost makes us winning this game a certainty doesn’t it?

Time for the toss! I lost it, something which appears to be becoming quite familiar, but they put us into Bat. Which is handy because I would have batted first had I won.

Good captaincy I thought, got what we wanted out of the toss, now time to cash in on a very quick outfield and a perfect wicket. Ryan and I opened, and we were both back in the shed within 10 mins of the start. Barry and Carl followed relatively quickly, along with Challand and Muppet. At one point we were 48-5, then 72-6, not looking good. An impressive opening spell by Bradford saw him bowl 8 overs, take 4 wickets and only concede 4 runs, 2 of which were off the bat.

This is the queue for some heroics from the lower order, Nick Burton went and batted with no fear, bashing his way safely to 37 before being caught. Olly Taylor continued to play cricket shot after cricket shot, scoring the majority of his runs straight and in the V. He managed 62 before being bowled. This along, with a good 21 from Chaz and 18* from S Yates saw us to 224-9 from our 45 overs. Many more than I had expected a couple hours earlier.

From memory, we suspected that Garsington’s strength lay in their bowling, so a few early wickets and we may have them struggling. As they kindly didn’t complete our book I don’t know when the wickets fell, opening bowlers Chazbo and Grant took 3 wickets between them (2 and 1 respectively). Ryan also picked himself up one before leaving the door open for Barry to do the rest. 6 wickets, a catch (I won’t mention the two sitters you dropped Baz) earned him a place in the Oxford Mail. Top performance from the whole team in the field, to bowl Garsington out for 147, giving us a 77 run victory and 30 points.

MOTM – Olly Taylor for the match winning innings.
Champagne Moment – PoD for a catch on the boundary… I won’t bore you with the incredible details.
Pigs ear – Of course, Barry for dropping two sitters…