3rd XI lose but stay top

The early arrivals to the village would have seen the sight screen fallen back onto the fence and road due to a blustering gale in Saturday’s late morning hours. Once it had been hauled back onto the field, the match captain Mo Valiji stepped in once again in Phil Smith’s absence. The stand in captain won the toss and decided to bowl in cloudy conditions on the front pitch at the village.

The opposition got off to a steady start before Tommy Smith bowled the No.1 bat in the 7th over. The No.3 bat, who won his side the corresponding home game earlier in the season, came to the crease and made a nervous start. After missing his first two deliveries, he proceeded to chip the next ball high in the air to the mid-wicket fielder, who managed to make a mess of his footwork and the catch, falling back after getting his hands to the ball. That would prove to be one of several costly drops. He was also dropped at long on twice and a dolly went down at point as well. The other opener was also dropped early on by 1st slip. Joe Sheridan came on in the 24th over when the score stood at 120-1 and bowled a remarkable spell. The first of Joe’s wickets was the No.2 who was bowled before the No.3 bat was finally caught by Afzal for 80, after being dropped on 0, 15, 30 and 55. 8 wickets fell in the last 11 overs as Joe cleaned up a tail that started at No.4. The opposition finished on 205-9 with Joe ending with figures of 6-39 off his 8 overs. A disappointing fielding performance also included a few missed run outs and misfields with too many runs slipping through the field.

Joe Sheridan (23) and Piers Jenkins (22) opened the batting and scored at a decent rate before Piers nicked one to the wicket keeper and Joe nicked one onto the stumps which made the score 55-2 after 13 overs. Karan Chand (19) and Sanket Shah (31) tried to keep up with the climbing required rate but after they both fell along with captain Mo, the score was 124-5 after 29 overs. Needing 82 to win with 11 overs left there was limited hope and 4 wickets then fell for 20 runs in the next 5 overs. Afzal Sayed (26*) and Andrew Godfrey (12) had a valuable 10th wicket partnership of 31, the 3rd highest of the innings, and this also brought 2 more batting points.

Catches win or lose matches and that certainly occurred today as the opposition were allowed to score too many runs. The batting and bowling was decent but the drops were very costly. This was only the third loss of the season, with two of them being to Hatfield and Crusaders. Overall, gaining 16 points in a loss was not disastrous, although this may become clearer at the end of the season. We remain top of the league with both title rivals still to play. Was this the day we dropped the league title, or just a blip on the road to glory?