Headlines - 4-0-28-2 for me, was on a hat-trick, the ball was driven straight back at me at just abover ankle height and I skipped out of the way! Keeper (Rousey) was in disbelief, reckoned I should have got down for that and caught it - pfft!
Back again trying to write this up at work with no access to pictures. An interesting game where Rousey gave everyone a bowl and I mean everyone except himself and Phil Tooke who I think is a very good bowler. Jack Farrrington was first up from the Vange end and bowled a tidy first over and then Rousey had me up for the second over bowling from the "Main Road " end. Again I went into this with no illusions of doing either good or bad, or with anything in my mind like "Don't forget to get up on the toes", I just ambled in and bowled in a way that I was comfortable with and again for the 2nd game in a row now it came out okay. Slightly daunting in that it was the 2 openers, but following the logic that openers don't expect to face spinners, it panned out to be a reasonable tactic, although it could have gone wrong! So whereas these blokes may have expected to take their time a bit, to settle into a rythmn against a new ball being bowled at pace, they had me bowling relatively accurately and getting the ball to turn a little. As a result in the time it took them to get settled I'd taken two wickets.
I took the first wicket 20 mins in getting N. Stapleton LBW off a Leg Break pitched up on the leg side that was blatantly going on to hit the stumps, so much so that I went up for it. This was a bit of a revelation for me as I never go up for LBW's, but this was so obvious that I did and after a few seconds of screaming, and watching the umpires brain ticking over the finger went up slowly for my first ever LBW wicket! He was then replaced by the No.3 - A Penny, a young bloke. The next one up was a leg break that bounced up and come off the top edge of a bat presented straight for a back foot defensive block, the ball went straight up, Rousey jumped up stopped its upward momentum, changing its direction and then juggled it again at least once before taking it. Thereafter the wheels started to come off a bit and one of the bats (No.2)? started to swing the bat a bit and in one over I got hit for 10 and Rousey quite rightly pulled the plug on my bowling leaving me at 4-0-28-2.
The star of the show though had to be Wrist Spinner Frank Farrington, having played over at Belhus this morning in the U13's and only taken 1 wicket he came into this game bowling against adults.
