Theale and Tilehurst vs Eversley 16th September 2006

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Report by Fingers

Meady was in charge again and on winning the toss put Eversley in to bat on a green looking wicket. Arsalan took an early wicket when a ball popped and the ball was spooned back to him for a simple caught and bowled. A second wicket could have soon followed when Pullen spliced one in to the gully area where Micky and Mo both watched on expecting the other to take the catch.

Pullen was able to take advantage of this life and was soon striking the ball cleanly. One cut shot he played though was not as cleanly struck and kept Andy interested all the way to the boundary, so interested that he didn’t see the waist high rope that was about a foot past the boundary line and he continued straight in to it doubling himself up and almost slicing himself in half. After about five minutes when everyone had stopped laughing we finally went over to check that he was okay, fortunately he was.

Mission was the second to go caught and bowled by Imran and when Pullen was bowled by Jamil and the score was 79-3 we were looking in a reasonably good position. The position could have got much better but both Swan and Collen were dropped early in their innings and they like Pullen went on to make us pay a high price for these errors. They both went to hard hit fifties and it was only the return of Jamil at the end of the innings that forced the breakthrough. As it was Eversley finished on 231-6 which was considered at tea to be probably a par score for the conditions.

The T&T reply go off to a quick start with Micky and Raj both finding the boundary but things soon went wrong; Micky, Meady and Nehal all going in quick succession to leave the score 20-3. Raj and Jamil kept the aggressive tone going and it looked like we might get close in quick time. The turning point in the game was Jamil’s dismissal, Saunders bowled a ball down the leg side which Jamil missed but which thudded in to the ‘keeper’s pads and back in to the stumps with Jamil out of his ground for a freak stumping. This left the score 101-4 at the end of the 15th over.

Imran unsurprisingly continued in the same vein and got off the mark with a flat batted six over long off and when the score reached 150-5 we again looked in a reasonable position. Raj had continued his recent good form with another fifty but when he went with the score on 150 along with Imran victory looked a long way off even if there remained plenty of time to get the runs.

The innings subsided to 170-9 and it was only a last wicket partnership of 32 between Andy and Phil that took the score past 200.

After the game a few of us decamped to the restaurant across the road for the AGM of the Theale and Tilehurst Gourmet Club and the induction of new members, or so we thought. Phil and I were the only founding members of the club in residence and accordingly welcomed the others to their first meeting. However, the meeting threatened to descend in to Life of Brian like farce as Bob and Doug claimed to be the founding members of the Gourmet Club of Theale and Tilehurst and welcomed us to their AGM. Fortunately the two groups agreed to merge and we were able to carry on with dinner, Micky ordering very strangely seemingly only being prepared to order items that came served between enormous slices of bread.