Theale & Tilehurst 1st XI vs Sonning 10th June 2006

BACK

Report by Fingers

The visit by Sonning to Theale put us up against what has probably been the leading side in the Berkshire League over the last five years. On a day when he would have been happy to lose the toss Cat inevitably won it and proved that he does have the words “we’ll have a bat” in his vocabulary. The predictions before the game were that this would be a high scoring game on a very good surface so having elected to bat first we had to put a big total on the board.

James and Cat got the T&T innings off to a good start against the bowling of Grout and Abbas, James nearly cutting Abbas for six in the first over of the innings, and it was the introduction of the significantly slower Parr in to the attack that slowed the scoring rate and brought about the fall of the first wicket when James was caught at mid-on. Meady soon followed as he continues his in-depth study of trying to find the most annoying way to get out and it seems that being run out going for a third ranks pretty highly.

Cat was continuing on his way but what we needed was one of Crofty or the returning Jamil to get going in support of him, unfortunately both got starts and then got out. It was Dopey who briefly threatened to start the late over onslaught with a couple of sixes off Parr but again having threatened he too was out before being able to make a serious impact on the game.

It was Cat himself who provided the late impetus to the innings as he reached a chanceless century, one of the best hundreds most of us could remember and apparently the first century scored against Sonning 1sts in the league for many a long year.

With Doc hitting some late boundaries the final score was 224-6 which whilst a very good effort and getting us in to the game was probably only at the bottom end of par for the pitch and conditions. We would have to bowl and field very well to have any chance of winning the game.

When Mark Richards took four boundaries off Doc’s first over it looked like the game was going to move on at pace and it did for the first few overs with Wright also particularly strong on the pull. Apparently Cat and Richards played for the same team when they both lived on Worcester, on Saturday’s form I think most of the bowlers might have been looking for other things to do on any Saturday when that fixture came up on the list.

The first breakthrough was achieved when Doc bowled Wright and Richards reigned himself back in a little so the scoring rate started to slacken from its early heights of about 12 an over. As with the T&T innings the second wicket came by way of run out and when Fingers picked up the wicket of Richards and followed that up quickly with the wickets of Roberts and Ayub T&T we were back in the game with Sonning at 123-5. Jamil had bowled a very good containing spell but unfortunately neither he nor Fingers could pick up the all important sixth wicket as Harris and Abbas put on 67 for the sixth wicket. When Cat ran out Harris with 35 still needed there was a glimmer of hope but this was soon put out by Abbas as he played some powerful shots and it was his final four which brought up his own fifty and took Sonning over the winning line.

This was an excellent game of cricket where we played pretty well against a very good side. If we can maintain the standards from today in the weeks to come we can look forward to some more positive results.