My sons have been playing cricket almost as long as I have
in the U11’s, U13’s and under 15’s and as far as I can recall they have never
beaten the mighty Orsett. When I was at Grays, the team to beat more than any
other was Orsett if you was in, or associated with the youth teams, so tonight for the first time ever, I witnessed them
being beaten! Yet there was no sense of occasion because the people around the
team I guess haven’t had the same agenda over so many years in the same way that
I have? We nearly beat them in a final, years ago when Ben was in the U13’s we
only needed to hit two more runs for a win and we didn’t quite make it and that
was as close as we ever got. Since then they’ve smashed us and bowled us into
oblivion, even with Frank Farrington’s amazing spell a couple of years back we
still couldn’t get across the line.
But tonight we won the toss for once and with the weather
being freezing cold again with the light failing as the match progressed, we
for once had the choice of batting first and we took it. Right from the outset
we made runs and soon Frank Farrington was retiring on 35. All the other boys
for the most part made contributions with the bat, without the score sheet, I
can remember Abdul Baig scored 13 as the opener, his brother Mohammed Baig hit
a few good balls and at least one boundary, U13’s Charlie Blerkom contributed
and the surprise of the night was Sam Jones smacking a number of 4’s across the
boundary. This put the boys in a pretty good position with 119 to beat after
the 20 overs with 3 wickets in hand.
Their bowling attack had been pretty average apart from
their strike bowler D. Rose (batsman No.3) who came on 1st change,
he bowled superbly taking 5 wickets for just 9 runs off of 4 overs. But despite
his superb effort with the ball (No wides or no-balls either), our batsmen kept
piling on the runs Rose just didn’t have the support of his team. He them
proved himself to be a good all-rounder hitting the ball aggressively scoring
runs quickly too. Our openers Sam Good and my son Joe Thompson kept the runs
down with the help of the rest of the team in the field who fielded superbly
under Franks Captaincy. Sam Good did well 4-0-22-2 as the opening bowler
supported by my son Joe at the other end 4-3-5-1. Joe had one ball put down
which was a rare fielding error, but significantly Joe took the wicket of
bowler/all-rounder D.Rose who was hitting the ball for 4 far too many times,
Joe trapped him LBW with the 3rd ball of his last over for 23 runs. Wickets
were taken by Abdul Baig , Mo
I’ll update this when I get access to the score book next.
Can’t believe that I didn’t take a camera!
