Theale and Tilehurst Friendly XI vs Eversley 8th September 2007

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Report by Derek Pringle

The original fixture was supposed to be against Warfield who pulled out earlier on in the week. Thanks to the hard work of a certain few we managed to get a game against Eversley through the conference.

With the Thames Valley league continuing a week more than the Berkshire league it appeared that the team we were against was in fact their 4th team. To be fair it had a share of young colts and wily experienced veterans and a traitor in the guise of Hammad Ali who kindly at short notice stepped in to help 10 man Eversley.

Phil Jenkins was the captain and due to the opposition skipper saying his side was weak there was no toss and T & T would bat first.

As in end of season friendlies the batting order was switched so that people who didn't usually get a bat were advanced up the order. Young Mo opened the batting with the President and this seemed to be a magical balance of youthful power and experienced knowledge. Eversley opened the bowling with a brace of colts with J Forsyth in particular bowling well from the School end getting the odd occasional bounce and accounted for Mo with a ball that appeared to be going down leg and took off stump. Bondy and Hoody came and looked like they could build an innings with Eddy but both went trying the big yahoo and being bowled because they had swung 10 minutes too early. I came and joined the President and we managed to get the score to 103 before the president was bowled by Gallagher.

Now it was a case of the 2 left handers (Sicknote and Dopey) who took advantage of the gaps that Eversley left in the field and put together a partnership of 91 before Dopey went for 61 and T&T's score had got to 194-5 that soon became 199-7 as Sicknote and Indy went soon afterwards. Now Sunil and Ossie put on 46 for the eighth wicket with Sunil scoring 43 which was due to the fact that Ossie had only faced to balls in 7 overs. T & T closed on 250-8 which was a good batting display.

Nehal and Sunil opened the bowling and both bowled bowled 7 tight overs each with Nehal picking up the wicket of Brooks. Peter Hood and Indy were the change bowlers were both bowling exceptional. Peter deservedly picked up 2 wickets including that of Gallagher who battled to 34.

Indy in particular was bowling very well and using his height was getting some great bounce and movement. This was too much for one veteran Eversley batsman. First of all he had a wild swing at one ball there was a woody noise and the Chairman took what appeared to be a routine catch. Everybody went up, the batsman stood his ground, the umpire nervously said not out. Next ball Indy bowls an even better delivery and the same batman can only glove it to the chairman again who gets his gloves into action and claims an even easier chance. Everybody goes up (again) , batsman stands his ground (again) , umpire doesn't even say anything this time (as he had his head buried in the sand.

To be fair I feel I may have not been in the best position to comment on this. Standing where I was (mid off only about 3-4 feet to the bowlers left) I may have not seen something. In the case of the first appeal the bat was swung wildly away from the body but still the woody sound may have been a Greater spotted woodpecker drilling a hole in the oak tree by the church. The second ball rose steeply in the process it seemed to glance the batsman's glove as it went through to our wicky. With hindsight and T&T's very own hawkeye (Deano the social club alcoholic and Leeds fan to boot) it does appears that there was a cabbage white butterfly resting peacefully on the batsman glove that took the full blow of Indy's delivery and unfortunately didn't survive the collision. So in both cases the batsman and umpire were both correct.

All the T & T bowlers bowled well. Ossie, Bondy and Little Mo all picked up 2 wickets apiece to finish Eversley on 155 with T& T winning by 95 runs. The last wicket went in the last over when a mix up resulted in a run out.

A good game with a enjoyable outcome, many thanks go to Hammad who turned out for the oppo at short notice.