Theale & Tilehurst friendly XI vs MWE friendly XI

8th May 2011

Report by Fingers

The Sunday season is now in full swing and despite heavy overnight rain this match against Mortimer West End was able to go ahead.

The pitch was unsurprisingly wet and a bit soft so on winning the toss I chose to bowl first in a forty overs a side game. Rory and Jordan opened the bowling with Dave Keep and Jamie Stead opening the batting for MWE. Stead was able to take advantage of some short pitched bowling but Keep top edged a similar length delivery from Jordan to be brilliantly taken running round the long leg boundary by Rory.

Stead was joined at the crease by young Alex Mackenzie. Mackenzie hit a couple of good looking cover drives for four early in his innings but then became bogged down a bit against the change bowling. After a drive straight to Dopey at mid off Mackenzie set off for a single; Dopey moved in, picked the ball up cleanly and threw down the stumps for an excellent run out. Quite why the score book doesn?t read that Mackenzie was run out for 14 can remain a mystery to all of us; the angry whacking of pads and cursing must be a strange local way of celebrating successfully making your ground. He made 11 in his second innings before being out bowled.

Stead had dominated the second wicket partnership and apart from one chance batted faultlessly for his century. In truth we bowled too short to him and allowed him to cut and pull too much but it was a very fine innings. There were a couple of late wickets as MWE tried to push the score along, notably an excellent catch by James on the long on boundary, and MWE finished on 220-4. This was probably 30-40 above par for the conditions.

However, when James and Sunil were batting fluently together we looked like we might be able to mount a serious chase. Sunil, though, went towards the end of the new ball spells and when James went early to the change bowling we were up against it.

Dopey and Tim had a useful partnership as Tim hit some lusty blows on his way to 22 but another flurry of wickets and a run rate up around 10 an over left us with no option than to play for the draw. Curiously MWE made no real effort to try and win the game in these later overs, the field remained set right back with plenty still on the boundary and the bowling lacked imagination when the intentions of the batters were clear for all to see.

Once the game was safe Dopey was dismissed trying to reach his fifty with Alec able to come in and leave the last two balls as again the bowlers failed to make the batters play.

So ended an honourable draw; just think how dull the last few overs could have been if this had been a straight win/loss game.

MWE team photo

THEALE AND TILEHURST CC SCORECARD
Home Team		Mortimer West End						Away Team		Theale and Tilehurst
Date of Match		8th May 2011						Played at		Mortimer West End

		Team							Result	Team
Result									Drawn

1st Innings of		Mortimer West End
	Name	How Out			Who			Bowler		4's	6's	Score
1	J Stead	not out										131
2	D Keep	ct			R McFadyen			J Manning				6
3	A Mackenzie	bowled						B Cooper				25
4	T Prinn	ct			J Codd			B Cooper				9
5	J Gott	bowled						J Manning				5
6	G Stamp	not out										17
7	K Stamp
8	P Belcher
9	N Kingston
10	I Wise
11	A Prinn
							Byes	4
							Leg Byes	1
							Wides	20
							No Balls	2
									Extras			27

							Wickets	4	Total			220

Bowling			O	M	R	W
1	R McFadyen		8	0	45	0
2	J Manning		8	0	40	2
3	M Mehta		8	0	33	0
4	A Parcell		8	0	43	0
5	B Cooper		8	0	55	2
6
7
8

Fall of Wicket
	Score	Outgoing Bat				Stand of
1						0
2						0
3						0
4						0
5						0
6						0
7						0
8						0
9						0
10




2nd Innings of		Theale and Tilehurst
	Name	How Out			Who			Bowler		4's	6's	Score
1	J Codd	ct			I Wise			J Gott		5	0	21
2	J White	bowled						N Kingston		0	0	0
3	S Kumar	lbw						N Kingston		1	0	18
4	M Mehta	ct			T Prinn			I Wise		1	0	5
5	D Robertson	ct			N Kingston			K Stamp		5	0	46
6	T Kasozimusoke	ct			A Mackenzie			J Gott		2	1	22
7	C Manning	run out								1	0	6
8	R McFadyen	bowled						A Mackenzie		0	0	1
9	B Cooper	not out								0	0	2
10	A Parcell	not out								0	0	0
11	J Manning
							Byes	20
							Leg Byes	2
							Wides	2
							No Balls	1
									Extras			25

							Wickets	8	Total			146

Bowling			O	M	R	W
1	A Prinn		8	4	16	0
2	N Kingston		5	1	20	2
3	J Gott		8	2	29	2
4	I Wise		6	2	26	1
5	A Mackenzie		7	1	18	2
6	K Stamp		6	0	9	1
7
8

Fall of Wicket
	Score	Outgoing Bat				Stand of
1	4	2				4
2	46	3				42
3	51	1				5
4	57	4				6
5	95	6				38
6	107	7				12
7	123	8				16
8	143	5				20
9
10