Theale & Tilehurst Friendly XI vs Mortimer West End 14th May 2006

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Report by Fingers

The Sunday side made the short trip to Mortimer West End for this friendly game and on a pitch where 240 had been successfully chased the day before MWE skipper Paul Belcher had no hesitation in batting first on winning the toss.

The first wicket wasn’t slow to fall with Keep being clean bowled by a huge in-swinger from Micky. Bob was also getting plenty of movement in the air and Tom Prinn and Ram Patel did well to survive and keep the score moving fluently; the second wicket to fall was Patel to Bob as he went for one big shot too many.

The main partnership of the MWE innings was between the young pair of Prinn and Kingston; Prinn being the more orthodox of the two but Kingston more regularly finding the boundary. With them both scoring fluently it looked like we could be chasing well over 200 in what was a straight 40 over a side game but the game was turned when James ran out Prinn with a direct hit when Prinn was looking for the single he needed to take him to 50. James was soon back in the action taking a superb one handed catch at mid wicket to dismiss Payne and when Kingston soon followed the scoring rate was dragged back under control. Khadim was introduced in to the attack late on and managed to pick up his first wicket of the season despite stating that he wouldn’t be able to swing the ball as he had shined it too much.

A closing score of 192 (or possibly 191 but more of that later) represented a good come back by T&T in the last 15 overs and on a typically fast MWE outfield well within reach for T&T.

James and Khadim opened the innings for T&T and both got off to fluent starts as both Kingston and Filmer struggled with their line and length. The fifty partnership was raised in the 8th over and it took the experienced Ray Roberts to slow down the rate of scoring. By this stage Khadim had lost some of his initial fluency and he was the first to go for a well made 47 and he was soon followed by Meady. When Meady had been clean bowled on Saturday he suggested it was the worst form of dismissal and he would rather be lbw, when I suggested to him that he must have been happy with his dismissal in this game though he didn’t really seem to agree.

James continued to go along well and was joined by Spike in a hard hit partnership of 52 for the third wicket which took us to the verge of victory before Paul Belcher took a very good one handed catch above his head to remove Spike. Hamad came in and instantly struck a couple of very well timed boundaries and James then struck another to take the score the 192 and victory as both scorers thought; however, 192 had been displayed as the first innings score on the scoreboard for the whole of the innings so those in the middle carried on assuming one more run was needed. Not to worry the scorers thought, just let James get one more to confirm the inevitable. Needless to say at that point one shot along the ground to catch James in front of all three and Meady had no option but to put his finger up and give the lbw. It was therefore left to Micky to score the run we needed (or not) to close out the victory with five overs to spare.