Basildon & Pitsea CC v Grays & Chadwell CC Under 11's

Joe leaves the pitch with Steven (our man of the match)

I think this is either the last match of the season for Ben and Joe or that maybe they've got one more to go? As normal I woke up gutted that I was going to have to get out of bed before 08.00 hrs on a Sunday, so at 07.55hrs I got up and started the normal mad rush to get everything done in 50 minutes. As usual it all came together and we were there at the pitch just before 09.00 and Anthony Ayres was there along with Jody. Weather was cloudy bright and a slight breeze with the slight threat of possible rain a little later on.

Matt Hills was there already with a hangover from last mights Beach Party at G&CCC clubhouse having got in at 2am and being found at the foot of the stairs in his house feeding his cats and insisting that he was going to lay there and watch the cat/cats eat their food before going to bed. Needless to say he wasn't in that good a condition and the sun was hot.

Grays & Chadwell were put into to bat first Matt conceding that despite numerous sessions they were still not quite taking on board what was being taught, saying that a lot of them are still 7 or younger and just seem to forget everything that was being taught to them. There was quite a big contingent of G&CCC parents including some of the Dads that I've played alongside before.

Killer opened the bowling and produced an exceptional start bowling a wicket Maiden with his fast stuff taking the wicket of Charlie Hodge. His second over was just as miserly with 5 dot balls and one wide. Harrison was 2nd up and he nealy matched Killer with a wicket and 2 wides, but from then on it was downhill all the way with the bowling.

With Harrison towards the latter end of the game undoing all of his good work in his first 2 overs with a poor final over where he got smashed for 16 and had a no ball 3. The bowling went to pieces after Connor (AKA Killer) and Harrison with wides being the main order of the day. G&CCC's batting as predicted was limited in it's ability to get the run rate going but Mr Wide was very much on their side and just kept getting them extra runs. A couple of the G&CCC kids hit the ball for 4 but their star batsman was Jack at the end of the game who as I recall was one of the smallest and youngest kids on their side. 2 more wickets were taken - Reece (G&CCC) caught by Steven (B&PCC) off Sonny's bowling. Steven stumped Jack (G&CCC) off his own bowling when the ball was fielded quickly and returned to him at the bowlers end. With regards the wicket keeping Jody had a nightmare match with one opportunity leaving his Dad with his head in his hands in despair as he was the stump umpire. The kid was stranded with 2/3rds of the wicket to make up and the ball was returned to Jody very quickly Jody caught it and could probably have walked it to the stumps, but he steadied himself, took his time, took aim with the kid now getting within 10' of the crease and threw the ball about 10' to the stumps and it missed! Apparently his was gutted! Joe Thompson my son fielded poorly forgetting to use his long barrier technique and letting the ball pass him on 2 or 3 occasions, fortunately someone backed him up each time and he got away with it. Both Ben and Joe bowled poorly in this match giving away shed loads of wides. The thing is it's not as though I've not asked them this week if they wanted to come over and join me on our private wicket that I've cut twice this week in preparation for some intensive pre G&CCC practice, but each time I've asked they've turned me down.

Matt said that having to focus on the scoring and figuring out where I was making the mistakes with the scoring soon sobered him up. I still haven't got 100% to grips with the scoring but usually muddle through it with the help of the other scorer and again it took the 2nd sheet before I found a rythymn to it and felt happy with the way it was going, it's just that everytime you do the scoring the other bloke seems to always do it slightly different to what I do.

Batting

After teas it was our is was our teams turn to bat (In this instance my team is B&PCC). Jody and Ryan opened and produced the partnership of the match and if it hadn't been for Ryan being bowled by G&CCC's Jack they'd have got a really good score (19). The bowling highlights of the G&CCC were Charlie and Catherine. Unfortunately Ben had to face the possibility of the humiliation of being bowled out by a girl, but you can see by her bowling figures that she was pretty good equalling Charlie with 2-0-3-0 and the 2 of them easily the best bowlers of the Grays team. Joe scored 1 not out and Ben was unfortunately bowled by the kid with the worst bowling figures of the Grays team, but by this time Mr Wide was scoring just as many runs for us as he had with them previously.....

This is G&CCC's Reece's bowling and the wicket is Ben's - gutted! As far as B&PCC were concerned as long as there wasn't a whole series of wickets taken (It could happen remember last week at Rayleigh with the spinner) it looked as though Mr wide, Jody and the boys had done enough at this point to win. Sonny and Anthony Ayres did the right thing defended their wickets and made a run each. Anthony's apparently was the first run in a real game all season. I think the same may have applied to my son Joe as he came off full of himself as he'd made some runs (1 I think)? But to give Joe a lot more credit he ended up again facing a kid much bigger than him who was quite a handy bowler and all of the balls that were on the stumps Joe blocked, so both Ben and Joe are beginning to get the hand of it and realise it's really important to simply not get bowled out or caught.
Basildon win 289 for 3 against G&CCC's 248 for 6 both teams had in excess of 65 extra's. Looking at the scoring sheets although I knew what was going on and Matt and I agreed as we were going along what was happening I'm not so sure anyone else would easily make sense of it, so I'll have to tighten up on that a bit although the second sheet today was a lot better than the first. So other than all the extras the boys did well. You'll not be surprised that in the Post Match debriefing Graham announced that tomorrow night at the training session they will mostly be bowling!

Once home Joe and I had a bowl outside the house over 20 yards and in 18 balls he threw 3 wides and hit the stumps 6 times including a lovely big turning leg break, the rest were predominantly leg side mostly but compared to his match performance massively different becuase he'd warmed up in the match!!!!!

In the evening both of them went over to our private wicket and again in a short spell Joe hit the stumps 6 or 7 times to Ben's 0. He definitely needs a warm up before the game.

Man of the match we reckon was B&PCC's Steven, he took a good catch, took a wicket & scored four runs & helped Joe with his running between the stumps (Communication). On that note a lot of our runs were down to very sensible runs made on little nicks, mis-fields, over-throws, byes, and wides were the more experienced kids saw the opportunity and helped out the less exprerienced kids so that was a real positive aspect to the game I felt. Unfortunately I can't post up images of the kids so where the kids are not G&CCC or my own kids I've had to blur out their faces.