22/06/2003 v LEEDS AND BROOMFIELD

lost

Richard was first to go bowled in the first over without scoring and from that moment on things went decidedly pear-shaped. Adam soon suffered being caught plumb lbw again with no score. This week’s new recruit - Adam Harvey faired little better scoring four before being caught.

With the ball seemingly doing what ever it liked Anthony was next to lose his wicket being bowled for just 6. Things went from bad to worse when Colin lasted only a few balls. Bob was then caught having scored just 1. So it was left to Pete and Martin to try and shore things up with just John waiting in the wings and the score on just 16. A brief partnership was soon scuppered when Martin pushed one back straight to the bowler leaving the last two to try and avoid our worse ever score (35) just one week after posting our best ever (294 for 3)!

However an excellent partnership (all considering) saw this unenviable milestone well and truly left behind as Pete and John blocked up and picked off the occasional bad ball.

Sportingly, Leeds by this point had offered us the option of two more bats to make a match of things so when John eventually went in the 25 over Adam (Harvey) rejoined Pete in the middle.

The score soon started to tick along till the 31st over when Pete was caught out by one that popped up and nudged it to point.

This saw the reintroduction of Adam (Deal) and in the final few overs the score was topped up to 106 which only a couple of hours earlier would have seemed impossible.

The turnaround saw the pitch resume its indifferent style. Richard and Bob opened the bowling for us and with the score on just 7 Richard struck first with Adam (H) taking a great catch at short mid off. Bob notched his first very next over catching the other opener lb.

Another couple of low scoring overs ensued when Bob struck twice bowling two in a row with the score on just 14 and in his next struck again with Colin (on stumps duty) taking an excellent low catch.

With the score on 14 for 5 things were looking unbelievably promising but alas it was not meant to be and Leeds started to get on top. A brief spell from Anthony and Martin saw Martin take a wicket with the score on 44 but from that point on Jason Tharp and Paul Chismun comfortably reached the target making 51 and 23 not out respectively.

So all in all a little disappointing but then again that’s cricket, a record score one week near disaster the next. But Leeds were well worth their win – and we can look forward very much to the return in a few weeks time.