BACKReport by Derek Pringle
We all made it safely to the ground much to the relief of Bob who
had a coming together with the barriers a few years previous. To be fair a
To the game, James was carrying a back injury and Ossie skippered for the day. The first thing he did was lose the toss and we were asked to bat.
Now if you have never played at the Caversham ground there’s a few things you need to know. No matter whether it’s the hottest or the wettest day of the year the track will play the same, that is low and very slow. Secondly your ball will need to hitch a ride on Lewis Hamilton’s McLaren if you think you can hit it along the very mossy outfield to the boundary.
The weather was glorious as Meady and Raj strode out confidently to the middle. The two Beeb opening bowlers were slow medium so there was no real pace coming onto the bat. This was probably the reason Meady mistimed a long hop and spliced to square leg. Raj was next to go, bowled by a well disguised yorker by Sinka.
Now this brought young Hamad to the crease. Hamad is another of the young quality colts again coming through much to the credit of the youth team managers. It certainly won’t be long before he gets his first fifty. Now he and Leftie Dopey alternated the strike well cause both were finding it hard to get some rhythm due to the lack of pace of the pitch. It may also have been due to the fact that after every ball the 5 skippers that BBC seem to have argued about field placements.
Fortunately Dopey and Hamad broke the BBC shackles and were forging a very useful partnership and got the scoreboard motoring. It is known that any score over 150 at the Beeb is hard to chase. When Hamad went LBW to D Watkins for 37 the T&T score had moved to 158 – 3 with Dopey and Hamad sharing a 121 run partnership.
This brought Spike to the crease and he must feel unfortunate as he soon went caught and bowled by the pick of the BBC bowlers Watkins. The ball went so high it came down with part of a passing jumbo jet on it. Rags and Dopey went in quick succession trying to accelerate the score. Dopey reaching 84 and in the end T&T reaching 184 for 6 in 38 overs. The amount of overs was quite distressing seeing as we spent 2 and half hours in the middle.
At tea the T&T view was that 184 was more than enough and that BBC had to come out and attack from the start to stand any chance of beating us. BBC soon showed they were not interested in chasing our target in this timed game.
To be fair to BBC’s Deeks he was happy to run tight singles whenever the chance arose. The point that he made sure that in every occasion that he was not running to the danger end was very clever.
Bob picked up the the wickets of both openers. Now I’ve been a team mate of Bob’s for 7 years now and I will never get tired of him bamboozling any batsman with his artistry of swing bowling. In the case of Mr Deeks it was more desperation that he swung wildly and was put out of his misery at Gully.
Of the 6 bowlers T&T used, Ossie was the only one bowling pace. This may have contributed in only 3 BBC batsmen finding the boundary for the 7 fours that BBC made in their innings. It was disappointing that BBC never made a chase of it and to be fair weren’t even interested in reaching three figures.
All in all we were very happy in both aspects of our game. A word does need to be said for Matt Runkel’s efforts with the gloves. Which isn’t bad seeing as though he hasn’t played competitively since 1999. This and Hamad’s dogged batting performance were the highlights of the day.
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