Theale & Tilehurst vs Marlow Park 24th April 2004

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Report by Fingers

Following last week's win against Eversley this was likely to be a tougher proposition against the historically stronger Marlow Park. The toss is evidence of how this fixture has gone in the past - Marlow Park always seem keen to bat and we recognise that it is probably best for us to bowl.

As it was Marlow Park won the toss and elected to bat. Marlow Park had been a little late in arriving and in his rush to get to the ground Weston had pulled in to his parking space at too great a speed and hit the bin adjacent to the social club. However, his driving once out in the middle proved to be somewhat better and Mo's first ball of the season was despatched straight over mid off for four.

Slater and Weston got the innings off to a good start for Marlow Park before the first breakthrough came when Slater got an inside edge and was bowled by Mo. This was swiftly backed up by Andy taking two wickets in his first over, first Weston caught at mid off and then Hussain well caught by Phil standing up to the stumps. 38-3 seemed a pretty good position to be in.

Khan and Salina steadied the innings and took the score through to 70 before Andy found the outside edge of Salina's bat for the first of two excellent close catches by Phil Stephens.

T&T had a debutant playing for them and Farley Fernando was soon introduced in to the attack. His right arm medium pace showed some potential but he did have the advantage of not fielding to his own bowling. His fielding had soon caught the attention of his T&T team mates and as with most new players a nickname wasn't far away. In Farley's case he was nicknamed Mohammed for his fielding prowess. This was not in recognition of our own Mohammed but on the grounds that it appeared he wasn't going to go to the ball, the ball had to go to him.

At one point the Marlow Park innings had reached 117-6 and it appeared that they may be contained to a decent score. However, this was before the partnership between Khan who played a very controlled innings for his 68 and Mamood who hit the ball very hard on his way to 52. Their partnership of 101 took the game what was realistically beyond the reach of T&T.

In a straight overs game T&T had no choice but to go for the runs and got off to a decent start. Jamil carried on his good form from the week before and with James put on 78 for the first wicket. 110-1 was as good as it got though.

Jamil had displayed great ability the week before playing shots whilst on his rear end. However, he seemed determined to take it one step further this week but his attempts to run between the wickets whilst on his rear end inevitably ended in him being run out. When Phil went later in the same over to leave the score 110-3 T&T's best chances of making a decent attempt at the total had disappeared.

The collapse that followed though was perhaps worse than should have been feared. From 127-3 the last seven wickets fell for 14 runs as the highly effective slow bowling of the Marlow Park side took a tighter hold of the innings.

A defeat by 92 runs might not have been the most desirable outcome of the day but at least several players had got some useful playing time under their belts before the start of the league season next week.