Theale & Tilehurst Friendly XI vs Farley 30th July 2008

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Report by Fingers

And so to the final game of the tour as we stopped off at Farley on the way home.  Having arrived in Farley early we took over the beer garden of the local pub and used the Pétanque court for what must have been one of the most fiercely contested and ill tempered games of “keepy-downy” cricket ever played.  If Dopey as fines chairman had had a pencil and paper with him at the time he could have got everyone down for a fine or two there and then; as it was by the time evening came round and Dopey started erratically issuing fines he seemed to have forgotten that we had played “keepy-downy” at all.

After this episode we carried on to the ground for the proper game.  No idea who won the toss but we were batting first; to avoid any lethargy in the performance it had also been decided to give motor-mouth himself an excuse to talk even more by appointing him captain (that’s Aygz in case you hadn’t worked it out).

After waiting two clear days for a game James walked out to take the first ball and immediately found himself walking back with Jackson having bowled a ripper to take the top of off stump.  Spike and Aygz steadied the ship with a useful partnership for the 2nd wicket before Aygz decided to quite shamelessly run Spike out; Spike very generously making a sacrifice of biblical proportions to allow Aygz’s survival.

When the score was at 61-4 it looked lke we might fall some way short of a competitive total on a decent pitch with very short square boundaries.  Fortunately Tim and Os were able to put those fears to rest with an excellent partnership of 126 for the fifth wicket.  Tim showing how to take advantage of the short boundary as he hit 5 sixes in his 85 and Os scampering away for his 51; potentially it was Os’ aggressive running between the wickets that cost Tim a century as he seemed to have run out of puff by the end of his innings.

Rags and Speedo also both scored quickly at the end of the innings and 252-6 certainly seemed a competitive total to have set.

After tea Lemmy and Bob opened up the bowling and they both took an early wicket.  However, Colvill was soon starting to dominate proceedings and when he was joined by Rowlandson and their partnership went past fifty it looked like they were the favourites.  As soon as he got to his 100, though, Colvill was dismissed by Os and if Farley were going to get close it was Rowlandson that was going to have to get most of the runs.

With one end open, however, wickets were starting to fall regularly and with 32 needed Glanville came out to bat at no.11 with his skipper leaving him in no uncertain terms about what was expected of him.  However, the pace of Lemmy eventually proved too much for him and we were able to close out the win by 25 runs.