18/06/2002 v GROVE

Drawn

With a couple of new faces in the shape of Andy Carr and Rob Aldous we still unfortunately found ourselves one short when Chris got a late call from his Holby City chums to carry on with his intriguing ‘Hospital porter falls in love with trolley’ plotline.

After much discussion of missed Irish penalties Richard carried on his spectacular run of lost tosses and Grove elected to bat.

Adam and Richard opened and immediately got their respective eyes in with some very good tight bowling. The openers struggled on a slightly uneven pitch and scoring was slow. The first wicket came from a good ball from Richard which was snicked past Colin (once again on stumps duty) Martin chased it down and fired it in with the batsman taking a risky second Colin swivelled Flatley style and whipped off the stumps for a good run out.

Then followed a fantastic little spell, which saw Richard inducing a forced shot to short mid on where newcomer Andy took a great diving catch to his left.

Adam followed up with the batsman clipping one skywards which Colin had no trouble in gobbling up.

The new batsman looked particularly wobbly and Richard soon had him in all sorts of trouble – demolishing his leg stump in the process.

This saw Grove at 18-4 a wonderful start, which unfortunately we were unable to capitalise on.

The first change saw Martin bowl down the hill and he found it difficult to get his line and length. In a period in which there was some rusty bowling from the newcomers it wasn’t until Martin swapped ends that he started to make inroads.

The pitch seemed to calm down a bit and the batsmen in at this point were doing well. Despite some sterling efforts especially from Steve who seemed to be stuck down in ‘dingly dell’ for most of the afternoon, once again the man short in the field really began to make a difference. What didn’t help were some inexplicable lbw decisions that went against us. After much patience Martin eventually got his reward with Rob taking another great catch stretching far to his left. The last few overs saw an onslaught from Grove and with a couple of Utterly’s from Adam and Mark (who’s fan club found it hilarious) the 182-5 off 47 overs looked a stiff task. Grove started with a couple of young sharp bowlers start but Adam and Steve started well. Steve especially was scoring freely but chanced his arm once to often and was caught in the 11th over for 20. Mark was in next and again looked to be seeing it well however there was no denying the fantastic catch which saw him dismissed when he powered one only to see it gobbled up at short mid on. Rob went in next but soon played round one and lost his off stump. Colin then popped in quickly to say hello to his brother and promptly came straight back making us wonder if he was batting or performing twelfth man duties! Richard was next and stayed in for a few overs but once again was tempted in to playing across the line and was caught at square leg. With the draw in mind and over 15 overs to go Pete went out with instructions to try and stick it out and with Adam batting well did just that. However, whilst looking fairly comfortable against the pacier bowlers the introduction of a spinner, with a couple of overs to go, proved once again to be his downfall. Top edging one to the heavens for his usual Dr. Snuggles dismissal. Martin followed and duly saw out the last couple leaving us with a hard fought draw. Man of the match was undoubtably Adam who with carrying his bat through the innings and bowling extremely well confirmed his recent good form.

Without the dodgy lbw decisions and the tricky middle patch of our bowling and even their 47 overs batting to our 38 - this would no doubt have been a lot closer.

Talk of our streak being extended to three matches unbeaten was the topic of converstion at the as usual excellent after match tea. Top stuff!