Theale & Tilehurst Friendly XI vs Rotherwicke ICT 20th May 2007

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Report by Derek Pringle (Whilst on holiday in Los Montesinos, Spain)

Well this was a game of firsts. It was our first fixture against Rotherwicke ITW, the first Sunday home game and the first timed game instead of the 40 over aside games we were used to. It was also the first time I’d seen Raj open the bowling and batting (does he have some incriminating photos of James hidden away somewhere?)

James won the toss and put Rotherwicke into bat. Now Vallis strode out to the wicket wearing an Australian cricket cap I thought this could be interesting. Right enough, Bob bowled the first bowl of the innings outside off stump and Vallis tried to slog it through deep square leg. To be fair from then he took advantage of anything wayward which was a bit early on. Vallis raced to 50 in double quick time and the team score was only 57. Rags commented the similarities with the Crown Wood game. He was right one batsman was taking control, Raj dropped a catch (albeit a very difficult skied chance at Deep square leg. But more importantly we managed to put a stranglehold on their scoring between overs 22-32, Rotherwicke only scored 30 runs. This was mainly due to excellent bowling of Rags, Dicko and Trevor.

Vallis brought up his 100 with the team score not more than 130. His innings was ended when Spike took a steepling catch of Trevor .This brought about one of the moments of my life that will live on with me for ever. I’ve been lucky enough to see the Berlin Wall come down, the end of Apartheid, Reading reach the Premiership but they all fade in the distance. Our club pro was bowling his usual tight bowling when he caught Simpson in front of all three with his top spinner. He then managed to do the best impression of Zebeedee I’ve seen, rising 3 feet of the ground with each bounce before spinning around appealing.

All the other Rotherwicke batsmen didn’t get out of the teens and we managed to restrict them to 208 for 6 in 45 overs.

When T & T came out to bat we knew we wouldn’t be facing 45 overs so had to bat well to chase their score down. Raj and Micky started well and put on 61 for the first wicket before Micky went LBW to Tucker. Dopey came to the wicket with the pair knowing they had to put on a decent partnership to stand a chance of winning the game.

Now Raj is known to swing the bat a bit but today was different he played the game very intelligently putting the bad ball away and alternating the strike with leftie Dopey which seemed to effect the bowling of Rotherwicke. The pair were running hard between the wicket keeping the scoreboard ticking over. This Contributed in Raj’s downfall in the end being bowled by Swift for 75 as tiredness set in. Spike came and helped keep the scoreboard ticking over. Both he and Dopey went to bring Hammad and James to the crease with 36 needed from 7 overs.

Enter James and a brutal 12 ball 27 to get us over the line with 3.5 overs left. This was a pleasing win having only faced 34.5 instead of Rotherwicke’s 45 overs but as James rightly said after the game our fielding needs a lot of improving as Trevor will vouch for.