Good In Parts

08/06/2013

The Saturday 1st Team lost to Stratton-on-the-Foss by 95 runs. SOTF hit 205 for 6. RT1 bowled 1 for 25 from 8 and Garnier bowled 1 form his 8. TT took 2 for 27. In reply the Cowboys could only score 110 all out from 35.1 overs. Matt D scored 39. Scorecard. The match report is below.

The Saturday 2nd Team beat Grendel by 63 runs. ECCC hit 255 for 6 from their 40 0vers. Oli hit 80 and Matt C hit 43. In reply Grendel hit 192 for 7 from their 40 overs. Mohammed bowled 1 for 22 from his 8 and Hoops got 3 for 22. Scorecard. The match report is below.

09/06/2013

The Sundays beat Purnell by 7 wickets. Purnell hit 161 for 8 off their 40 overs. Sahil bolwed 3 or 21 and Kalpit bolwed 1 for 28, while Stratto bowled 8 overs, 4 maidens for 18 runs getting 1 wicket. ECCC hit the runs in  overs for the loss of 3 wickets. Boults hit 36 and Sahil hit 35.  Scorecard.

 Sat 1 Match Report.

Even after it seemed well done and dusted, some of the Cowboys exhibited great stamina and carried on: Garnier, RT1 & Lalith heroically refused to give up while others thought it was all over. The match might have ended hours earier in an almost humiliating defeat to bottom of the table Stratton on the Fosse, but at the Plough, boy could those Cowboys dance to that hippity hop music that they have these days.

“OMG, WTF happened there?” asked a magpie on the square at Farmborough as the Cowboys drained the barrels from the Ormigrove brewery.”I blame the new caps”, said a leatherjacket larvae, trying not to become a light supper, safe in the knowledge that fines for such dissent had already been dished out.

“Well”, chirped a blackbird, who had witnessed the whole of the afternoon’s proceedings from the shade of a boundary chestnut tree, ” It went a little something like this.”

As a mere formality, the skipper tossed a coin with his opposite number, won again and asked the opposition to bat against his octet of bowlers: A hot afternoon in the field was guaranteed, despite a gusting north-easterly breeze.

RT1 and Garnier bowled with customary theodolite-accuracy, beating the bat on numerous occasions and limiting the batsmen to only a couple of runs an over, accumulated as the ball flew from edges across the fast outfield. Both eventually took out an opening batsman towards the end of their tidy spells to have the Fosse on around 50-2.

The Landlord further contained the incoming batsman and after many vociferous interrogations of the umpire removed one LBW, then clipped the top of another’s off stump. Nice. SteveO swung his jazz from the other end but was wicketless and the No.3 batsman, who’d been let off the hook when a catch went down, soon commenced to make midsummer hay.

It wasn’t to be MattD’s day with the ball, nor Lalith’s, as the batsmen found the boundary with regularity after drinks, accelerating the run rate, building on modest beginnings and pushing the total beyond that which had earlier been thought likely: This was the team after all that had been dismissed by Bath for 46, albeit now bolstered by a new No.3 batsman who had just scored a fifty.

Iggy then had a go, but it was wizard Wilko, the last of the octet, who eventually removed both batsmen with Preash taking a smart second catch behind the stumps. The opposition batted out the remaining overs of their innings without loss to end on 205-6.

Tea comprised more baguettes than there are in a Parisian boulangerie, but the entente cordiale was maintained by scones, cream and jam and the Rapid Tea Response Squad stood down.

If the skipper had been somewhat spoilt for choice with his bowling octopus, the batting looked like plankton, if not on paper then in the deep water that the Cowboys found themselves in a few overs later. Grove clung to the liferaft as his partners disappeared, prey to a fine spell of quick swing bowling that found edges and stumps, leaving the surface of the water littered with ducks. The score was barely in double figures with four wickets down.

Operating with a somewhat inverted batting order, all was not lost as there was better batting to come. Grover’s resilience and MattD’s purposeful belief moved the score along, but after the opening bowler’s 4-17 the slower replacement bowling was almost as hard to get away. After playing well along the ground, occupying the crease and reaching double figures, Grover hit one in the air back to the bowler. Lalith didn’t malinger, but in his eagerness holed out too soon.

With six wickets down and a steep hill to climb, MattD, who’d cracked some welcome boundaries, was joined at the wicket by Iggy; the pair of them still capable of stealing victory, the latter exhibiting immediate intent with a powerful straight boundary. It was uncanny that after his departure last week, we’d assumed that J.Burgess was a thousand miles away by now, only for his namesake to be bowling for the opposition, not to mention another Wilko at the other end. Perhaps it was these coincidences that Iggy was dwelling upon, with his head down, when JB2 came in to bowl, startling him when he wasn’t expecting the delivery, too late to pull out of committing to play a stroke to the ball that bowled him.

SteveO tried to hang on but was bowled for the fourth of five ducks to waddle across the Cowboys’ scorebook. Preash’s spirited and capable resistance produced his first boundary for the team, followed by two much better ones, but when MattD was bowled for a Man of the Match winning 39, with the total struggling to reach three figures, the game was up. Cider Moments were hard to come by and even harder to remember after drowning sorrows later. No.11 RT1 should be congratulated on surviving more balls than seven of his teammates, on his way to his duck. Preash did his average no harm, remaining not out on 16: All out for 110 in the 36th over.

“I don’t believe you,” said the magpie.

http://nscl.play-cricket.com/scoreboard/scorecard.asp?id=11652469

Sat 2 Match Report

If Grendel, starting the game 2 players short, were hoping that their sunbathing girlfriends would prove distracting for the Cowboys youth then they might have been better to ask us to field. As it was Ollie, Asad, Justin and Matt Cavan all played big shots that had the Grendel WAGS scurrying for cover as the Easton Massive ran up a very challenging 255 runs for 6 down. We enjoyed our fine tea much more than the Grendel boys and girls, that’s for sure.

Ollie’s Man of the Match performance was founded on his splendid 80 runs. He had a scratchy start against some determined Grendel bowling, but gradually his nudges and nurdles transformed into well-placed clips and authoritative forcing shots – toward the end of his knock he was hitting middle-stump yorkers off the back foot through extra cover for four. Cowboys openers set the tone, both Asad and DC1 taking the opening bowlers for regular boundaries in their brisk and assertive partnership. As Ollie got his eye in at first drop Asad maintained the scoring rate until he feathered one through to the keeper. It was Justin’s eye for a single, and for turning one into two, that broke the back of the Grendel field, and as his partnership with Ollie grew so the opposition field grew rancorous amongst themselves. Whilst the fielders were delighted to eventually see the back of Justin and his 88-run partnership with Ollie Matt Cavan quickly wiped the smiles off their faces, rapidly advancing his score to nearly jug-avoidance territory in a partnership of 77 as the team score passed 200. With Noodles swipes and AB getting off the mark on Cowboy debut with a big 6 Easton left Grendel having to score at more than a run-a-ball to win the game.

Having a big total meant Cowboys could employ attacking fields and with early wickets for Asad and Alex H. it looked like we’d be back at the Plough early. Grendel had other ideas and a dogged 3rd wicket partnership had the Easton rotating the bowling. Both AB and Andy B. bowled threatening spells with no reward and it took a magic ball from Wayne Kelly to make the breakthrough. As one wicket brings two Alfie Baker bowled the Grendel skipper for a duck, and Grendel were now facing a run-rate in double figures per over. Grendel were determined not to give us anything, and the Cowboys were kept in the field until the end of the 40th over at 8.35pm. Alex Hooper finished with 3 wickets for 22, and reinforced his position as the Club’s most economical bowler and the Cowboys Saturday 2nds headed down Muller Road to celebrate 2 wins on the bounce.

Notes of caution – Grendel only fielded 9 players, and this game would have been much closer and harder-fought had they had a full side. Their skipper’s decision to ask us to bat was very strange.

MoM – Ollie 80 runs and very tidy keeping wicket

Cider Moment – Wayne’s altercation with the umpire over the run-out that wasn’t but should have been.

Debut – Anurag Bhatnagar (AB)

Scorecard – http://cowboys.play-cricket.com/scoreboard/scorecard.asp?id=11652555

Sun Report

…………. unless you’re the 1!

So here we go pop pickers, the review of the weekends action, my prediction of 2 wins for Cowboys teams was correct however I underestimated the powers of the rejuvenated Saturday 2s, Jeff’s Otters. Their victory over 9 man Grendel by 63 runs is recorded elsewhere by captain for the day DC1. Next Saturday sees them back at the Farm against bottom of the table Nailsea 4ths. Nailsea have yet to win a game this season, and in fact have failed to raise a team for 2 of their 5 matches so I hope the Otters get a chance to claim a hat trick of victories on the field. This is something that hasn’t been achieved by a Cowboy 2nd team since the famous 7 wins on the spin under DC1 in 2005. Back in those days several Cowboys used to play twice in the weekend so it is great to see so many players playing under the Cowboy banner at the moment. Only Justin played twice this weekend, as a late stand in. I predict another Ottertastic victory, hopefully on the pitch (not sure if it counts if they cry off Jeff).

The Otters now lie 4th in their 7 team division, only 4 points behind 2nd placed Grendel, and 2 points behind 3rd placed Whitchurch. 2 go up from this division so could the unthinkable happen….? What would be weirder is if the Otters got promoted and the Iguanas passed them going the other way, could we have a 2nd team playing higher than a 1st team? In division 3 the 1sts lie 6th in a 10 team league. However the teams in joint 3rd/4th/5th places are 8 points ahead on 16 points. Looking downwards the relegation places are filled by Nailsea with 2 points and Wrington with 0. Funnily enough that number is the same as 5 of the 1s batsmen on Saturday, get in the nets you dogs, quackitty, quack, quack, quack, quack! So Saturdays game against Wrington is looking rather important even this early in the season, will Iggy keep the faith with the team, or will he look to the 2nds to bolster his ranks and send some of the quackers to division 4 to refind their form? Either way I am going to stick my neck out and risk cursing them by predicting victory.

So to Sunday, where the Boltcutters continued their winning ways away at Purnells, who fielded a team of youth and experience. Sahil and Kalpit restricted the openers to a miserly 2 runs an over through the opening 10 overs though only 1 wicket fell, after another 10 overs they were still only scoring at 2 an over with Stratto rollling back the years, and roaring like a rutting deer during his excellent 8 over spell with 1-18. However nos 4,5,& 6 got hemselves in and accumulated a few runs mainly off the Heavy Roller who had forgotten his lucky tuppence, and lots of edges off the other bowlers. After Dean removed no 4 with the help of Kalpit, Sahil came back to clean up 5 and 6, to finish with 3-21. A wicket apiece for RT2 and Kalpit, plus a run out for Dean meant that the printers finished on 161 for 8 off their 40 overs.

After tea spent watching NZ nearly bottle it in the Chamions Trophy, Bolts and Justin strode out the wicket determined not to show the same lack of application. Indeed we were treated to excellent shots from both rattling the score along at 6 an over until Justin departed for 25. This brought Biffer Taylor to the wicket, unsurprisingly he kept the run rate up, until the skipper and he were out in quick succesion. If Purnells thought they were back in the match they hadn’t realised that Sahil was on his way out, with support from Duncan the game was finished in the 26th over when Sahil hit a 6 which landed in front of the few remaining attendees from a christening. Another of Sahil’s blows landed in the adjacent bowls club where earlier in the day some elderly residents of Paulton had been enjoying a more genteel game. Sahil deservedly won MoM and Cider moment for one of his sixes, or was it his reverse sweep for 4 requested by the opposition keeper?! Ollie also deserves a special mention for putting everything behind some very hostile bowling in an excellent performance behind the stumps.

Next Sunday The Sundays host Cheddar, 3rd v 4th, with Cheddar 2 points behind us on 16 points. Cheddar have now one 3 in a row, scoring over 230 in each of these games, with opener Ross Panes scoring 100s in 2 of these games. Only top of the table unbeaten Blagdon have beaten them in an 11 a side contest as they only had 9 in their early season defeat at Purnells. This could be an explosive game depending on which players are available for both teams, recommended viewing for those at a loose end on Sunday. Well it’s got to happen some time so 3 victories this weekend please!