Wield vs Candovers, Sunday 25th July
Weather: Warm with a threat of sunshine, unlike last week sunny with a threat of violence!!!!!!
Match summary – Nice to get back to playing Sunday cricket with no swearing to be heard, apart from Dougie.
Yes its true, Wield won the toss and with this weeks stand-in skipper Tony batting until the penultimate over before tea we still managed to score 204/4. Tony out for 72 hitting 3 boundaries, all 4's of course!!!! The 1st coming in the 21st over (no change there then).
Tony opened with Andrew Frome, who in the 10th over fell LBW for 9 with the score on 25. Decision given by Robin which won't help his hate mail from Odiham CC.
The next 3 batsmen all had a 50 run partnership with Tony (more them than Tony!!). Doug 27, Johnny Dennys a leg side 25 (this is not strictly true as JD hit his first offside boundary this year but it was off a leading edge and went through first slip!!!) and The Yew Tree's ringer Dave Warren 41*.
The other not out batsmen was Johnny KG who after arriving 30 min's late made his way to the bottom of the flag pole where he fell asleep (nothing to do with Tony's batting apparently). He was woken up an hour later by Dougie's bat making its way from the kitchen to the changing room!!!
After the usual high quality Wield teas, Tony not only led us out as skipper but in the absence of Max & Guy as wicket keeper as well. Unable to control his excitement was often seen jumping up and down behind the stumps or was that so the fielders could see him?
An opening spell of left-arm pace saw Will Frome get 2 wickets, including Candovers skipper Richard W seen off via an inside edge but given out LBW (even Tony stopped appealing). Will was backed up by the ever economical Dave M and was then followed by a wicket a piece by Robin (his usual bunny Andy Hill) , Dougie and Dave W. This left Candovers 125-5 with 12 overs left. 6 overs later the 7th wicket pairing were having more trouble with flying ants than the Wield bowlers.
So with no chance of them passing the total and with nothing to lose Tony gave Toby a bowl, decision that nearly won us the game!!!!! His leg spin (when it pitched) was turning square (?????) and he really deserved his 3 wickets (????????), 2 bowled and 1 impressive stumping from our skipper.
Candovers innings closed on 157-8, we claimed a winning draw and trooped off to the Yew Tree with the thought "if only Toby had come on earlier", now you don't hear that very often!!!!!!
Robin Hunt
