Theale & Tilehurst Friendly XI vs Holyport 22nd April 2007

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Report by Fingers

This was my first outing of the season this one away at Holyport. James won the toss and elected to field but apparently this didn’t matter too much as they wanted to bat anyway.

Pawan and Bob opened the bowling and both started well keeping the scoring relatively under control and Pawan picking up a couple of wickets; Thomson cutting to Dopey in the gully and then he produced a perfect away swinger that Cox edged to Tim behind the stumps.

The Holyport middle order though justified their desire to bat first and all played well. Initially there was a good partnership between Fowler and Pyle before Gareth had Fowler well caught at mid wicket for his first wicket for the club on his debut. A further good partnership followed between Pyle and I Butt.

It was during this partnership that I made my first bowling appearance of the season. To say it started badly would be an understatement, if it was shown on hawkeye most of the balls would have looked like they landed in about the right place, however that place was very much to the liking of Pyle who helped himself to two sixes and two fours in the over. When your first over goes for twenty it takes some dragging back to make your figures look respectable.

Fortunately Raj was keeping it tighter down the other end and like Bob was unlucky not to pick up a wicket on the day.

With a decent launching pad Holyport were able to attack the last few overs but this did at least afford the opportunity for some wickets. I Butt was the first to go for a well made 75 when he was stumped by Tim; not a straightforward stumping as he went so far across to the off side that the ball passed between him and off stump and ricocheted off Tim’s pads and back on to the stumps, the decision also took some time to come as it seems the square leg umpire was a little hard of hearing and didn’t realise for some time that anyone had appealed.

A late flurry of wickets left Holyport with a score of 242-9 and me with a very unlikely five-fer. Still a very competitive total though and probably 40 or so above par for the conditions.

Raj and Micky opened up after tea and Raj got off to a typically aggressive and typically short-lived start. Micky also went relatively early and it was left to Dopey and Speedo to try and forge a partnership that would put us in a competitive position. Unfortunately neither was at their most fluent at the start and whilst Dopey started to find his form Speedo got to the point where he seemingly ran himself out to put himself out of his own misery.

Just as Dopey looked like he was going to launch an assault he was bowled off the inside edge and it was left to James and Hammad to take the score to a respectable level but one that was never going to threaten to win what was a straight forty over game.