Football? Nooooo. Cricket is on!

25/05/2013

Sat 1 beat Midsomer Norton by 4 wickets. MsN hit 173 for 6. Matt D bowled 8 overs, 3 for 34. The cowboys got the runs in the penultimate over with Dunc hitting an unbeaten 46. Scorecard. Match report below.

Sat 2 lost to Lansdown by 9 wickets. We hit 150 With DC1 hitting 32 and Barnaby getting  28. Lansdown hit them off in 20 overs for the loss of 1 wicket. Scorecard.

26/05/2013

The Sunday Team beat Peasdown St. John by 5 wickets. PSJ hit 174 all out in the last over. Kalpit bowled 8 overs, 3 for 20. We knocked them off in 29 overs with Justine hitting 46, Bob hitting 45 (24 balls) and Sahil hitting 43 (28 balls). Scorecard. Match report below.

TT reports thus:

It was clear fresh and bright at Farmborough when the Cowboys convened to play against Midsomer Norton, although the same adjectives could not perhaps be attributed to all players in the home team.

Skipper Iggy won the toss for the fourth time in succession and gave the new ball to Budge and Garnier who both pegged the openers down with a tidy line and length, initially restricting the opposition to a paltry two runs an over. Around the time that Budge started misfiring occasional beamers, one of the batsmen (conveniently) developed an at-the-time unspecified problem and retired from the field, bringing a younger stylish bat to the crease.

As the score snailed along, a large mirror appeared from the clubhouse and was placed on a chair by the boundary. Was this an attempt to dazzle the fielding side with reflected sunlight? A signal to reinforcements in the hills? An opposition narcissist? The real reason revealed itself to be the solution to a problem the retiring batsman had had with a contact lens.

The Landlord and Lalith replaced Budge and Garnier but although they too kept the runs to a trickle and forced a couple of chances that went to ground, no wicket was forthcoming. ‘Boring,’ shouted Garnier, a man who in averting an accident recently, found himself horizontal in front of a moving car and for whom the arrival of an extraterrestrial test team would now barely merit a raised eyebrow.

At the drinks interval the opposition were around fifty without loss, but soon after the resumption MattD removed the obstinate opener and the previously retired one returned. The odd loose ball was put away and the score advanced slowly, until just before the hundred came up Matt hit the stumps again. A few overs later he bowled the new batsman to claim his third victim and Midsomer Norton were 116-3.

Ev and Dunc tried their arm but were met with a determined effort to raise the run rate in the remaining overs as the batsmen found the boundary with increased frequency. Garnier was prescribed the ball again to counter his attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, forcing the opening bat, who by now had reached his half-century, into a mistimed drive that swirled into the covers for the Landlord to pouch.

Late in the innings, making his debut for the Cowboys, Sean was given the ball and promptly bowled the batsman with his first delivery, thereby ensuring that there was at least one, if only one, potential Cider Moment for which to vote later on. Garnier then bowled the opposition skipper’s son, who’d aggressively forced the score up to 165-6 and by the end of the 40th over the total had reached 173.

It’s not often that one has to resort to Wikipedia to explain the tea, but …

“The Italian word frittata derives from fritta, the feminine past participle of “to fry” (friggere) and was originally a general term for cooking eggs in a skillet, anywhere on the spectrum from fried egg, through conventional omelette, to an Italian version of the Spanish tortilla de patatas, made with fried potato.”

What Wikipedia fails to mention is that the making of a frittata absolves the creator from having to take any wickets or score more than one run. Armed with this knowledge (along with many plaudits for a fine tea) Ev strode out to the wicket to open with Grove, returning very soon to do the washing-up: 2-1.

Inspired captaincy saw Budge coming in at number three, where he immediately appeared at home, striking the ball cleanly and running well between the wickets, putting on a near half-century partnership before being bowled for 24. Grove’s strokeplay ended not long afterwards when he was caught for 15, leaving Sean and Dunc to rebuild. The former mirrored his success with the ball, displaying some exquisite sweeps and square drives that spliced the field, the latter sweeping even finer and matching his partner’s accumulation of boundaries.

When Sean was bowled by the opposition skipper’s slow guile for 31, the Cowboys were half way to their target on 87-4. Lalith joined Dunc and stood tall to block a few before bending his knees to scoop the ball aerially out of reach of fielders, launching a couple of sixes over mid-on. A few chances went to ground in the deep but the pair stayed together until Lalith holed out for 24 with the score on 132-5. With Dunc determinedly dug in, Matt came in and hit a dozen runs, including a six, before being bowled and replaced by Iggy with twenty runs required from the last four or five overs.

With the echoes of Iggy’s Bath battering five sixes last week still bouncing around the valley, there was little doubt that the Cowboys would make it over the line, although it was Dunc who knocked off the majority of the remainder, ending unbeaten on a Man of the Match winning 46 and batting his team to a four wicket victory.

Captain Cod Piece reports thus:

Dobry dyen tovarischi

So what’s been happening during my brief island sojourn? Lets start with a comprehensive look at this weekends results, with all 3 league teams playing- well we would look at them if the tea tea deniers of Lansdown had bothered putting the result on the league website for their victory over Jeff’s gallant Saturday 2s. Let’s hope they choked on their chilli, and the sound spanking their 1st team got at the hands of our hosts from BWI. Match report anyone? This result leaves the Otters perilously perched 2nd bottom of Div 4, however next Saturday sees them away at Bath Exiles whose only victory this season came courtesy of Nailsea 4ths being unable to field a team. My bold prediction is victory for the Otters.

Meanwhile The Saturday 1s were busy dealing with Midsomer Norton 3rds, comfortably beating them by 4 wickets with an over and a half to go, chasing a total of 173. Hopefully the Landlord will provide us with some more graphic descriptions of this match. Iggy’s Iguanas now lie slap bang mid table with 8 points, as do their opponents next week Old Park. Bath and Oldfield Park both have maximum points in Div 3, with Wrington and MN3rds propping it up without a point. Despite the fact that Old Park have only lost to the top 2 I am going to put my faith in the Iguanas coming out on top in a tight game.

So to the Sundays who travelled to previously unbeaten Peasedown St John for their game. As the Sundays appear to lack any literary ability now Duncan is playing on Saturdays it is left to me to report on this battle. PSJ (that’s not Beckham’s last team for the French illiterates amongst you) started batting like a team that had previously won 4 out of 4, rattling up 70 without loss off the first 13 overs. It was beginning to look like a 250+ run chase might be on the cards. Kalpit had other ideas, removing both the dangerous openers, and a much less dangerous no 3 in a great spell of 8 overs 3-20. With Dean and Tom combining for an excellent piece of bowling/stumping to remove no 5, PSJ were looking far from table toppers. Bolts asked the Heavy Roller to take over from Kalpit from the top end, and he obliged by taking a wicket with his second ball, and finished with the impressive figures (unlike his own) of 3-16 from 6 overs as PSJ continued to throw wickets away at regular intervals. RT2 and Matt D came back to mop up the tail and PSJ finished thier innings on 171.

After tea the youngish (compared to us) PSJ team started confidently against Bolts and Justin, the skipper being dropped twice before succumbing for 9, runs were proving hard to come by, and things were looking even less rosy when Wilko departed without troubling the scorers. However this was obviously a ruse by the Cowboys. RT2 strode out to the wicket hit 4 with a classic on drive off his first ball, and then proceeded to take the PSJ bowling attack to pieces, almost literally in the case of the impressive young opening bowler from the pavilion end, as Rob smashed another drive straight back at him, hitting him in the shin and disabling him for the rest of the game. By the time Rob departed for 45 the game had turned. If the hosts thought they were back in the game after that wicket, they hadn’t seen that it was Sahil heading their way, marginally less brutally than Rob he continued to murder the by now desperate PSJ bowling attack eventually being bowled for 42, after hitting 7 fours and 1 six, as did his brutal predecessor. With 40 runs now needed for victory, and lots of overs left, young Tom T joined Justin at the crease. Justin’s innings, though far less spectacular deservedly earned him the MoM award, and should have been recorded for training purposes. A study in patience, playing yourself in, and excellent running between the wickets with all his partners left the young and athletic PSJ fielders very frustrated. Ironically it ended with him being run out for 46, young Tom gave himself a hard time about this until the older heads in the team made him aware of the Avery’s previously and obviously undeserved reputation for leaving his batting partners stranded! Shortly afterwards Tom and Kalpit finished the game off, the Boltcutters winning by 5 wickets with over 10 overs remaining. Smashing!

Next week sees the Sundays at home at BWI against Grendel Exiles, although they only have one win so far this season their scorecards show them to be a useful batting outfit, with Kalpit and Sahil unavailable next week this could be a tough one for Bolts boys but sod it I am going to predict 3 Cowboy league cricket vicories on the same weekend for the first time in over 3 years. With the Sundays lying 4th this would be an important victory to bring them closer to unbeaten Blagdon.

Dosvidanya