Theale & Tilehurst vs Stratfield Turgis 15th May 2004

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Report by Fingers

Finally the league season got underway as T&T took on Stratfield Turgis. On a good looking pitch but with the weather that there had been one that was likely to be slow and with some assistance for the bowlers both teams were keen to take to the field. Stratfield Turgis won the toss and Danny Spence duly put T&T in to bat.

With Shaun Spence having returned to New Zealand it was brother Danny who opened the bowling along with former skipper Steve Clarke. The early exchanges were fairly quiet with the scoring rate relatively low but no wickets falling either. James and Jamil posted the fifty in the 12th over and it wasn't until 66 were on the board that the first wicket fell with James playing on to Dance. Little did we realise at that stage that the next best partnership would be the one for the tenth wicket.

At this stage the batting became something of a one person demonstration. The highlight of Jamil's innings was his ability to seemingly place the ball wherever he wanted and in to a gap. The second wicket to fall was Micky run out following confusion between him and Jamil and then Jamil and Crofty put on 21, all before Crofty had faced a ball.

However, from the promising position of 115-2 when we should have batted Stratfield out of the game the history of collapses in the games between these two sides continued. Steve Ayers had been bowling very well and was now to start getting his rewards as the score collapsed to 150-9 with the best part of 10 overs remaining.

The initial intention of the final pair was to bat the overs but with the combination of some lusty blows from Phil and some aggressive running between the wickets a partnership started to develop. With the final batting point secured a few more chances were taken with Steve Clarke bowling Phil in the 44th over to finish the innings. Between them Phil and Fingers had equalled their own 10th wicket record for the 1st XI.

Whilst not as many as looked likely at one stage a score of 179 in an early season game was certainly competitive and would take some getting.

Stratfield are heavily reliant on their top five to score the runs for them so T&T were always going to be in the hunt whatever the score. The initial pattern of the Strafiled innings was the same as T&T's with a no early wickets but a lowish scoring rate. The 1st wicket fell in the 11th over when Headford drove to Jamil at mid on and the second should have fallen in the next over. Clarke played a pull shot which lobbed up to mid wicket but having made very good ground to get there Jamil put the catch down. This could have proved very costly but fortunately Mo bowled him in the next over.

At 99-3 with Dance and A Sandland playing well together Strafield could have been seen as favourites but we knew one more wicket would open up the lower order. It was Chris who got the breakthrough, having had a confident appeal for a catch behind turned down earlier he finally dismissed Dance lbw to make it 99-4. The introduction of Crofty to the attack helped instigate the collapse as first he got rid of M Sandland very well caught running and diving forward by the Vanilla Coke Boy at long on before Phil had a straightforward stumping to get rid of J Norford. In between these James had superbly run out A Sandland.

Time was starting to run out though as the opening bowlers were brought back. Mo's 10th over proved to be something of a roller coaster, first ball he got rid of D Norford lbw. He then had Jones taken at second slip only for the call of no-ball to cut short the celebrations, two balls later be bowled him to make amends.

It was left to Doc to apply the finishing touch bowling Ayers to give T&T victory by 42 runs and 30 league points.