Linacre vs Lincoln II, May 10, 2005
Summary: We won by six wickets with 12.4 overs to spare.
The team: we were missing four of last week’s players (Jason [captaining Chemistry], Chris [away], Asif [injured], and Alex [last minute supervision]), and the team contained three new players in Bobby, Chris McCabe, and Tumelo Mashishi, and the long-absent Tim Rayden. As a result, we still had a strong side to take on Lincoln II, whose side were the usual mixture of a few first team players, some regular second XI players, and some complete newbies.
The report:
Given that Saranya had to leave half way through, I was desperate to win the toss and field. As it was, I got held up in traffic and Jes lost the toss. For some reason, they decided to bat anyway! A suprising decision, really. Admittedly, the strip is on an East-West axis, and their controversial fake plastic trees (concealing mobile phone masts) weren’t going to shield batsmen from the late sun. But the bowlers and the keeper had to cope with it as well, and a total of 33 extras in their innings tells its own story.
Once again, our bowling was brilliant. Richard and Rob opened up, with the first four overs going for a grand total of two wickets, and one run. After this, the next pair put on a long, although fairly unproductive, partnership. Stew, Tim and Adam came on, and although we only took one wicket we kept them tied down tightly until Rob came back in the 19th over. That over read: Single, Wicket (bowled), Dot ball, Wicket (bowled), Wicket (bowled), Wicket (bowled). Shame about the single really, as there can’t have been too many four-wicket maidens in recent Linacre history! [Rob, facing the prospect of buying rounds for both taking 6 for 6 and getting a hat-trick, decided to go home and not back to the bar]. Dave held a beauty at gully from a ball that got up a bit, and Richard took a nice catch in the covers. Otherwise the fielding was nice and tight, which helped to tie down the only two batsmen who ever looked like getting going (although Bobby’s technique of stopping the ball by trapping it under the sole of his shoe, while effective, is not recommended in any coaching manual I’ve seen!).
As for the batting, there isn’t much to say. If I get out to a worse pie than that all season it’ll be interesting. Bobby was bowled by a far better ball than the one that got me, Tumelo showed some classy shots, and Tim Rayden scored a brisk thirty-odd with some stylish driving and two huge sixes. With their bowlers spraying it everywhere, it was never going to last long, and we overhauled their total (by means of four-wides) in the middle of the 13th over, and with half the overs left to bowl.