Work in progress
At last a game in which I bowled okay! After recent performances I wasn’t expecting to be thrown the ball, but with G-Man at the helm there was always the chance that at some point I’d get a go and sure enough I did. Running up to it though I wasn’t fancying it particularly, but with the recent practices and all the exercise that I’ve been putting in there was some potential, but as the game went on and I wasn’t asked to bowl well beyond the 30th over I was thinking that maybe I’d be bypassed…
It almost started out as a disaster as I’d checked our website and got the postcode and it was for a venue just north of Romford on the A128/A12 intersection. Running late I was also tempted to skip going to the club first which is a waste of diesel most of the time as I end up driving to the venue on my own, but aware that there were a few young uns in the team, there may be a need to give someone a lift, so I drove down there just in time to give Mitchell McLeod a lift and to be told that the ground was no-where near the place indicated on the website, so ended up following G-Man.
The ground was another 7 miles or so further deeper in North East Essex near Roding Lane, Chigwell alongside the M11, if I’d followed my earlier plan I’ve probably not have got there! We arrived under grey skies with the imminent threat of rain, incidentally as I write this on the following Monday there’s a report in the paper saying that this is the wettest June in over a hundred years, so when the rain did come in fits and starts later during the game no-one was surprised and talking to the opposition they had the same stories of not being able to play because of the weather.
They won the toss and opted to bat which was how we’d have had it if we’d have won, so we were happy to field. Initially we were well short of blokes with only 9 of us taking the field – Rez, G-man, Ryan, Jimmy Breeze, Jack Farrington, Mitchell McLeod, Steve, Jamie Britton (Wicket Keeper) and me. Ateeb Hassan and Erskine were AWOL or running late. Ateeb turned up later and Erskine wasn’t contactable.
It was in interesting game as the opposition again looked to have a similar but slightly older mix of players, with their younger players being in what looked like to 18-15 age bracket – the sort of age where you’d expect them to be reasonable players. There were a couple of older blokes, but much older than us - in their 60’s perhaps nearer 70 one of them! The opening batsman who was one of these older blokes looked a bit and sounded like captain Mainwaring out of Dads army and had that same middle class air of authority about him. He was soon dismissed by ***** leaving **** and **** to get their runs on the board. All of them initially played with a great deal of caution, not looking comfortable at all, leading me to assume that possibly they were a side with strong bowling.
The batting throughout the game looked decidely tentative, so much so that fielding at Mid-wicket, I soon saw that anything on the legs wasn't being put away and that chances were being lost close in between the short mid wicket position and short leg. G-Man did the same and there were obvious contenders for catching opportunites. G-Man and I moved in close for these blokes and sure enough the chances started to come.
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