Report by Mr Ed
A rather lacklustre display consigned the First XI to defeat in its first away league game of the season.
After being put into bat, Theale & Tilehurst struggled throughout with the slowness of the wicket. Although everyone batted with determination, we were never able to come to terms with the home teams bowling which exploited the conditions well. Even at this early stage of the season, our innings followed a familiar pattern; a reasonable opening stand not consolidated by the middle-order with some lusty blows by Mo Iqbal at the end. At the end of our 45 overs we had only been able to muster 128 runs for the loss of nine wickets.
On such a pitch and with a slow outfield, such a score was potentially still enough although it did not look like we had scored enough runs as early as the second ball of Sonning's reply which opener Waqar smashed for six. Waqar explosive innings was thankfully cut short by a splendid catch by skipper, Brian Cooper (or so I'm told I didn't see it). We were unable to capitalize on this early breakthrough despite some tidy bowling. Particularly frustrating was seeing, the other Sonning opener, Tariq play and miss time and again, and then hit the odd boundary, such an approach proving more successful than our efforts. At one stage of the innings, we reduced Sonning to 100 for five, and another couple of wickets at this point could have turned the game in our favour. However, with a moderate target to chase and some positive hitting at the end, Sonning were able to overhaul our score with no further success for ourselves.
We have made a disappointing start to the season but I think we have the talent to make dramatic improvements. We should be more confident in backing our own ability and take the attack to the opposition more frequently. If we adopt such an approach we will quickly find that those half chances in the field will start going our way we will soon start winning games. Credit should go to Sonning who played well and won comfortably adapting to the conditions better than us. In particular special praise should go to D Parr who in a statistical oddity took 5 wickets, 5 catches and scored 5 runs.
| SCORECARD | ||||||||||||||||
| Home Team | Sonning 2 | Away Team | Theale and Tilehurst | |||||||||||||
| Date of Match | 12th May 2001 | Played at | Sonning | |||||||||||||
| Team | pts | Result | Team | pts | ||||||||||||
| Result | Sonning 2 | beat | Theale and Tilehurst | |||||||||||||
| 1st Innings of | Theale and Tilehurst | |||||||||||||||
| Name | How Out | Who | Bowler | 4's | 6's | Score | ||||||||||
| 1 | T Sant | ct | - | K Smith | 1 | 0 | 17 | |||||||||
| 2 | J Codd | ct | D Parr | P Wilding | 2 | 0 | 20 | |||||||||
| 3 | M Pyke | ct | - | D Parr | 3 | 0 | 24 | |||||||||
| 4 | E Choules | ct & b | D Parr | 0 | 0 | 4 | ||||||||||
| 5 | D Robertson | ct & b | D Parr | 0 | 0 | 6 | ||||||||||
| 6 | A Johnson | ct & b | D Parr | 1 | 0 | 13 | ||||||||||
| 7 | B Cooper | ct | D Parr | K Smith | 0 | 0 | 6 | |||||||||
| 8 | M Iqbal | not out | 4 | 1 | 29 | |||||||||||
| 9 | C Lemm | ct | - | D Parr | 0 | 0 | 2 | |||||||||
| 10 | Nigel Halliday | ct | - | K Smith | 0 | 0 | 1 | |||||||||
| 11 | P Jenkins | not out | 0 | 0 | 0 | |||||||||||
| Byes | 1 | |||||||||||||||
| Leg Byes | 1 | |||||||||||||||
| Wides | 4 | |||||||||||||||
| No Balls | 0 | |||||||||||||||
| Extras | 6 | |||||||||||||||
| Wickets | 9 | Total | 128 | |||||||||||||
| Bowling | O | M | R | W | ||||||||||||
| 1 | K Smith | 15 | 4 | 39 | 3 | |||||||||||
| 2 | P Wilding | 6 | 0 | 22 | 1 | |||||||||||
| 3 | D Parr | 16 | 4 | 38 | 5 | |||||||||||
| 4 | W Ahmed | 5 | 1 | 11 | 0 | |||||||||||
| 5 | S Banning | 3 | 0 | 16 | 0 | |||||||||||
| 6 | ||||||||||||||||
| 7 | ||||||||||||||||
| 8 | ||||||||||||||||
| Fall of Wicket | ||||||||||||||||
| Score | Outgoing Bat | Stand of | ||||||||||||||
| 1 | 30 | 2 | 30 | |||||||||||||
| 2 | 38 | 1 | 8 | |||||||||||||
| 3 | 51 | 4 | 13 | |||||||||||||
| 4 | 76 | 3 | 25 | |||||||||||||
| 5 | 76 | 5 | 0 | |||||||||||||
| 6 | 95 | 6 | 19 | |||||||||||||
| 7 | 95 | 7 | 0 | |||||||||||||
| 8 | 109 | 9 | 14 | |||||||||||||
| 9 | 122 | 10 | 13 | |||||||||||||
| 10 | ||||||||||||||||
| 2nd Innings of | Sonning 2 | |||||||||||||||
| Name | How Out | Who | Bowler | 4's | 6's | Score | ||||||||||
| 1 | W Ahmed | ct | B Cooper | C Lemm | 0 | 1 | 9 | |||||||||
| 2 | Tariq | ct | M Pyke | Nigel Halliday | 4 | 0 | 25 | |||||||||
| 3 | S Banning | ct | M Iqbal | A Johnson | 4 | 0 | 35 | |||||||||
| 4 | N Marshall | ct | J Codd | C Lemm | 1 | 0 | 17 | |||||||||
| 5 | D Parr | bowled | A Johnson | 0 | 0 | 5 | ||||||||||
| 6 | N Thorpe | not out | 2 | 0 | 18 | |||||||||||
| 7 | K Smith | not out | 1 | 1 | 14 | |||||||||||
| 8 | A Driver | DNB | ||||||||||||||
| 9 | N Groom | DNB | ||||||||||||||
| 10 | S Rayfield | DNB | ||||||||||||||
| 11 | P Wilding | DNB | ||||||||||||||
| Byes | 2 | |||||||||||||||
| Leg Byes | 1 | |||||||||||||||
| Wides | 2 | |||||||||||||||
| No Balls | 1 | |||||||||||||||
| Extras | 6 | |||||||||||||||
| Wickets | 5 | Total | 129 | |||||||||||||
| Bowling | O | M | R | W | ||||||||||||
| 1 | M Iqbal | 10 | 1 | 23 | 0 | |||||||||||
| 2 | C Lemm | 8 | 1 | 27 | 2 | |||||||||||
| 3 | T Sant | 3 | 0 | 13 | 0 | |||||||||||
| 4 | B Cooper | 5.4 | 0 | 23 | 0 | |||||||||||
| 5 | Nigel Halliday | 7 | 1 | 19 | 1 | |||||||||||
| 6 | A Johnson | 6 | 1 | 21 | 2 | |||||||||||
| 7 | ||||||||||||||||
| 8 | ||||||||||||||||
| Fall of Wicket | ||||||||||||||||
| Score | Outgoing Bat | Stand of | ||||||||||||||
| 1 | 9 | 1 | 9 | |||||||||||||
| 2 | 52 | 2 | 43 | |||||||||||||
| 3 | 90 | 4 | 38 | |||||||||||||
| 4 | 90 | 3 | 0 | |||||||||||||
| 5 | 100 | 5 | 10 | |||||||||||||
| 6 | ||||||||||||||||
| 7 | ||||||||||||||||
| 8 | ||||||||||||||||
| 9 | ||||||||||||||||
| 10 | ||||||||||||||||