Match Report vs Whitchurch Heath 7 May 2017 @ Whitchurch Hospital (Skipper Darren and report Ed)

First Sunday of the season saw us at the Hospital ground against Whitchurch, with the captain for the day running late from morning football Kimbo in familiar surrounding took the toss and cazh made there way into the field.

Rich and Pete are not a bowling combination that you would normally put together but that just shows what a maverick captain freckles can be when he is awake. The first breakthrough was not far way, with Richie bowling the taller opener with one that riped back through the gate, throwing the ball up there and letting the wicket do the work was the chosen attack for both bowlers and they mastered it with these 12 overs between them going for only 53 runs; great effort from our part time spinners.

The Stephens brothers took up the mantle and started to probe the technique of the batsmen, with Paul doing particular well dealing with a very short leg side boundary. The lack of easy runs started to play on the batsmen minds’ with Mark bowling two victims, Pablo due to his social nature included some other members of the team by getting the batsmen to squirt one out to Cheese at point caught then giving a chance for Will (slasher) to get some reward for all his bail bother by bamboozling the batsmen to walk past the delivery.

The captain gave the chance for Cheese and Goff to bring the innings to a close, they both approached this in different ways. Cheese getting smacked for a huge 6 off his first ball meant that he was playing catch up for the rest of his 11 balls. Goff was bowling just back from a good length meaning that he was difficult to drive but the ball was not wide enough to play square. The batsmen finally decided to take the risk and planted him over mid on for a four off the final ball of the innings but no whats this Shakey has leaped salmon like into the air and plucked the ball one handed out of the air. Leaving the cazh 228 to get with the bat.

I dare say about now you will be asking how did they get to 227, unfortunately the cazh had to suffer a mauling in the opening 8 overs. Goffy and Rob both bowled well but the taller batsman had come out with the mindset to attack which hindsight of the rest of innings served him well.

After tea, cazh started the batting innings sure in the knowledge that the over by over score would be greatly in the Whitchurch favour for the first 10 but if we could get back level 25th we would be in a good shout.

Tesh and Kim opened from the first over it was apparent that the cazh would be chasing the game with the wicket getting drier over the course of the afternoon leading to more bounce and some sharp turn. Kim & Tesh struggled to get to grips with the bowling or the wicket with steady 50 partnership off 15 overs.

Kimbo was a the first to fall getting bowled trying to get on with it, Britpop joined Tesh at the crease but with the oppo turning to spin had to force the issue straight away. The drinks break was delayed until Britpop got out therefore was delayed by two balls!! Britpop miscued a drive that looked like it was going to drop safe until some young athletic type managed to grasp the ball before it hit the ground.

Will walked out to the crease and with certain amount annoyance from the rest of the batsmen timed one through the off side straight away and with his usual amount assurance managed to rotate the strike especially urgent during the last ball of the over. The oppo decided to bring on the fourth change bowling which turned out to be a pace bowler at the very start of his career, Will looked to milk the bowling for the first three overs when it came apparent that he might see more of the bowler than was reasonable he looked to go big but instead found deep mid-wicket.

With 3 wickets down the cazh were around 5 overs behind where they need to be but still only required 8 an over with a batting line up going deep with the once leading run scorer for the club batting at 11, though I think its fair to say that Shakey is more interested in driving cakes into his mouth then balls to the boundary.

Cheese and Tesh tried to up the run rate helped with some full tosses to short leg side but when they both got out in consecutive balls it looked like the game was up.

With the required rate up to 12 an over the cazh innings fizzled out though still going at a run a ball helped by some super shots from Pete to the mid-wicket boundary. Cazh losing by 40 runs.

For the first Sunday outing of the year reaching 180 and getting 6 wickets is not a bad return.

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