Hursley Park vs Wield, Sunday 26th August
Weather – Gale force winds with sunshine & smiles
Match summary – Amazingly our 11th draw in a row against Hursley Park and Lord Flash-heart becomes a musketeer
Max, decided to have a toss for the late skipper, (max was 40 minutes early) and came 1st! He inserted the opposition and after 20 overs and 100 odd runs it looked to be an excellent decision as we really fancied our chances of chasing down 400.
Hector opened the bowling with Tom Cole, the latter struggling to bowl into a late August zephyr. The official skipper decided to replace Tom with his own brand of tweekers; the usual thrift and guile were missing as the Hursley openers picked off the occasional bad ball and deposited them along the carpet-like outfield to the boundary.
Hector continued to bowl well without much reward and finished his spell wicketless. I replaced Hector and managed to bore both of the opening batsmen with my lack of pace, Guy took a really good catch to give me my first wicket and with the drinks break accounting for the next victim caught and bowled the Hursley score card took a turn for the worse.
As mentioned above the first 20 overs went for 105 the next 20 however went for just 40 as Hursley’s answer to our very own Robson took to the crease and used an array of different methods for not hitting the ball, their umpire helping him to survive a few shouts. Luckily with the breeze as it was, the ‘cupboard’ couldn’t hear the batting advice that was on offer from us and his teammates in the pavilion as tea was nearing. This left the young Hursley bat to swing the willow and get runs on the board, which he did well… They ended up with 196-4 off of 47 overs, surely a record for the Wield pace attack?
Anyhooo a fantastic tea ensued that would have graced any Wield home game (I believe the skipper enjoyed another delightful cake or five)
Enter Toby, replete from a run glut with his new found club Hawkley, however his day was not to be after being bowled (surprisingly) on the last ball of the first over. This cheered me up no end as I limped (I had just bowled 14 overs and had tucked into my 1st half of the day) to the crease to join master flash-heart Robinson. We proceeded to make their opening bowlers look average-ish as Ed disregarded the fishing book and concentrated on playing proper; nay I hear you say; proper cricket strokes to bowlers of the like not seen before this season & on a pitch never seen before.
It was with great reluctance that I departed this road to stand at square leg and watch Flash-heart and the young Don try to overhaul this mammoth target. With deliveries disappearing to all parts of the Hursley district the ex Flash-heart passed his 50 with aplomb and the young Don played to his strengths before departing for a fine 28. The newly crowned musketeer was united with his youngest (and best) cricketing brother, they both combined to reduce the target until the young pretender was cruelly run-out by his big brother.
This ended the Wield run charge and unfortunately for the newly crowned musketeer his innings, as he meekly surrendered to the evergreen Chris Westbrooke for a career (hopefully not lifetime) best of 95, the Wield innings ended with another star for skipper and us finishing 20 runs short in a really good fun game and a non-bore draw.
Grumpy Doug even smiled, we think…..
