Saturday 7th June 2008

We played Sri Lanka this time, and just for a change I won the toss, and decided we’d bat. Defensive play against strong bowling saw us reach 27 before CB’s wicket fell.

Carol’s wicket fell when we’d reached 42.

The same bowler took Steg’s wicket, soon followed by Christopher’s. Two balls later he got Richard’s wicket, along with his five-fer: 62-5.

Merilitherin then came on, with his sneaky spin, and bowled me with his first ball, and had Ivy caught and bowled. At 66-7 we were into the tail, who subsided fairly quickly (fortunately a large number of wides were bowled, to help our score, which finished at 82-10).

The least said about the behaviour of some of our players at tea-time, the better.

Clearly with such a low target to defend, tight bowling would be the order of the day. We could only afford to give away two runs an over, and I warned all our bowlers that anyone not keeping up with that standard would be dropped forthwith. Given last week’s performance, Phil’s face fell somewhat.

Tom and Vicus opened, and Tom (as he so often does) managed a caught and bowled after only one run was on the board. Sadly, Vicus dropped a similar chance the next over.

Our second pairing brought some youth into the attack, as Christopher and I had a go. Christopher held his caught and bowled chance.

We finished the opening spell from our key bowlers, with 16 overs bowled, and just 14 runs on the board. Could Phil and MinCat be as economical?

Phil showed us that last week was an aberration, with three maiden overs, while MinCat took a wicket.

I returned to our openers, who were slightly more expensive, as was Christopher when we moved to our second string attack, although I was continuing to bowl maidens, so I stuck to spin and brought Phil back – he dropped a caught and bowled chance in his first over, but took a wicket in his second, so that’s OK.

I took myself off with one over of my spell left – I said I’d bowl the final over, and risk being hit for sixes as the run chase hotted up.

Vicus took a couple of wickets in his final spell, and with two overs left our tight bowling plan had worked, as they still needed 33 runs – not an impossible target of course, and full attention from the whole team was still required.

I took a caught and bowled with the final ball of the match; Sri Lanka finished on just 54-7 and so we won by 28 runs!!

As the scoreboard shows, every bowler had an economy rate of below two an over, as I had requested. Well done to all concerned.