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Wield vs West Meon, Sunday 6th July

Wield 186-2 (winning draw!!!) West Meon 89-6

The 7 year war took.....2,555 days, A 7 year itch takes ......
61,320 hours (though seems longer), Break a mirror .... 3,679,200 minutes.

Toby made his Wield debut on 3rd June 2007 and 228,960,000 seconds(ish) later, the moment finally arrived and the Wield bell rang loud and proud as Toby made his first 100 for Wield. Birds took to flight, grown adults wept, children celebrated and even his team mates clapped!!!!

To put this into perspective this is only the 8th century by a Wield player at home since the turn of the millenium!!!! It is only the 3rd in the last 10 years but enough of the boring stats!!!!!!

For once Yorkie was unable to negotiate/win the toss and we were inserted. A new (for this year) opening partnership of Toby and Robson Snr arrived at the crease at the unusual time of only 5 mins late!! I mention the time as Toby started to bat as if he was on a promise at 3, either that or West Meon had vandalised his van in the car park. 4 after 4 was bludgeoned to the boundary and before anyone could take a breath I had moved onto 1.

Mixing great shots with the odd wild swing Toby raced towards 50 as I raced towards 10. With the applause from his team mates only being drowned out by Jack hurtling abuse at his father!!!! 70 came and went while I sprinted through the teens. 100 partnership arrived and was celebrated with a old school handshake.

As his milestone neared I tried to calm Toby down and suggested a slightly more cautious approach. The next ball flew over gully!! The next over mid on!! The next somewhere over cow corner!!! A large air shot was followed by a beautiful drive and the crowd rose to celebrate a wonderful 100!!!

Finally Toby's innings finished on a fantastic 108 and as he walked back up the hill I had time to count my 30 runs!!!!! Will arrived at the crease and unsurprisingly the scoring slowed. I finally managed to hit a couple off the square before Will was unluckly run out. Jack joined me for the last 2 overs and as the Robson boys walked back up the hill Wield had posted are very competitive 186-2.

Another wonderful tea was greatfully recieved before Yorkie's usual inspirational speech started with the words we have 12 players so can you skipper!!!!

As (very) Senior opening bowler Ken chose to bowl into the wind. Aidan bowled down the hill and Ken soon regretted his decision as the Wield hurricane began to increase!! Aidan got one to nip back and West Meon were one down. With the wind helping Ken's outswinger scoring was kept to a minimum and after 14 overs West Meon had 22, a score boosted by 16 byes!!!!!!!!! Aidan was replaced by Wade and after several very close shouts Ken finally got the umpire to raise his finger. After a couple of dropped catches and with 20 overs to go West Meon had crawled to 45-2 and showed no appetite to go for the runs.

Desperate situations call for desperate measures and the skipper brought on our joke bowler!! Robin bowled his usual mixture of long hops and flighted wonder balls! Paul joined in with the long hop game and a couple of wickets fell. The Fromes both had a go with similar outcomes before Jack took the ball and was gifted a couple of wickets.

The final ball was reversed swept and went 2 feet which summed up West Meon attempt to chase down our score and they finished on 89-6 with Wield claiming a winning draw and Toby claiming (probably) Champagne moment of the season.


Tony