Theale & Tilehurst Friendly XI vs Crown Wood 29th April 2007

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Report by Fingers

The start to the Sunday season has been not what we might have hoped with two defeats; it was time to put an end to that run and register a victory.

In this away game against Crown Wood James won the toss and elected to put the opposition in to bat. The Colt opened the bowling from the tennis courts end and to the third ball of the innings Crook drove him straight to Rog at mid-off who put the relatively straightforward catch down. Those familiar with the film Sliding Doors will know its premise of two different stories unfolding, one when the lead character Helen catches to tube train home and one when she misses the train. For most of the next 20 overs many of the T&T players, the Colt no doubt in particular, were thinking about the alternative game that might be being played out if Rog had caught the catch as Crook dominated proceedings in a manner rarely seen. We knew he was dominating the scoring and realised to what extent when he brought up his fifty with only 55 on the scoreboard (in fact 53 out of the 55 scored at that point). Rog also had a rather brutal penalty to pay for dropping the catch when later on he got a hand to a straight drive from Crook off his own bowling that split one of his fingers open; it would be mean of me to point out at this stage that it was in fact another chance.

When Rog split his finger open Crown Wood very kindly offered a substitute fielder for him; the main role played by the substitute fielder was to make Rog look good in the field with Dopey being the unlucky bowler. When a shot was lofted down towards long on not only did the fielder make no effort to go for the catch but he also let the ball go between his legs for four. At least Rog might have stopped it. It’s worth pointing out that the Puri family name was saved by Tyler’s sterling efforts in the field as he subbed for Gareth who pulled a quad, or whatever you do to quads, in the second over and had to go off for the remainder of the innings.

When Crook was dismissed for 86, bowled by Rags in the 19th over, the game changed significantly and the scoring rate was slowed to a crawl. It was only some lusty late hitting by Sever that got the score up to nearly 200 when for the early part of the innings 220 had looked a minimum.

James and Rog opened the reply for T&T and both went early. Rog was the first to go edging to the ‘keeper first ball; on his return to the pavilion he announced that he hadn’t got an edge on it and shouldn’t have been given out. This was despite the fact that he had walked and if he had listened carefully he could have still heard the edge echoing around the trees when he got back to the pavilion. James followed soon after, much to the relief of Sever who had worn one square cut from James in the lower abdominal area to the extent that he wouldn’t have beaten a count of 100 in getting back to his feet.

4-2 left a long way to go but fortunately Dopey and Mike were able to launch a recovery and despite neither being at their absolute best were able to score relatively comfortably at the required rate. Mike reached his fifty first and having got stuck after the drinks break Dopey eventually followed. It looked like they might take us all the way to victory until Mike played back to a full length ball and was bowled by Crook for 63 (including 11 fours).

Meady replaced him and started what might be a regular Sunday series of doing batting impersonations of other club members; this week the featured impression was the club President himself, Mr Ellis. The impression was so convincing that at one stage Crown Wood had four defensive fielders behind square on the off side and Meady was still trying to late cut everything.

As it was Meady and Dopey put on an unbroken partnership of 72 for the fourth wicket to take us to victory with 3.5 overs to spare.