Leigh - on - Sea cc

 April 22 - 2023 Friendly

N.Attwood (No.3)_________________________

No images of the player.

Attwood batted No.3.

As you can see his main shot was through the off-side and we had blokes in the positions marked with the blue dots. With the outfield being slow Attwoods shots were played late,  so along the ground. Eventually caught by me at cover.

The wagon wheel is an approximation made from notes made in the break and after the game. 

Game played at Southchurch Park in fairly cold conditions with cloudy bright conditions with a  cold east south east wind blowing off the Estuary. I wasn't there for the toss, but arriving late it was obvious that we'd be fielding first. The team had changed from the original I'd seen posted on "Playcricket...

The wicket was green and damp given that these are un-covered wickets and we'd had a cold week with very little sunshine, but a fair amount of April showers...

what3words - manual.glaze.drove

We got off to a good start keeping the run rate to around 2 an over. Our oldest player (4th XI) Tony keep bowled with a broken toe and still managed his full 8 overs with 2 wickets for 8. One LBW and the other was a catch by me in the Covers. With Tony was one of our boys Tom Tomason who I think is 15. I think this was his 2nd game having played in the 6th XI last summer. Michael Gray bowled well too with a wicket off 4 overs for five. That then as usual brought out the big guns and me into the mix. I end up bowling to...

Impey, Reed and Threadgold who you can see looked to 'Go after the spinner' and 'Not let him settle'. Reed  (RHB) looked the most threatening as far as I was concerned and whether they were kidding or not they referred to him as their 'Overseas player' he had a South African accent? He looked good and not phased at my bowling, he dealt with my Flippers quite easily, so I scrapped them and went with the Leg-Breaks and top-spinners. Our most athletic player Jon Bonnet was positioned at Deep Mid Wicket and although he'd already dropped a catch he was also the most likely to take a catch in that position. Having been hit for a couple of 2's and possibly both his 4's and the other bloke ensuring that he rotated the strike to get Reed facing me, I decided to lob up a ridiculous moon ball to try and lure him into hitting one out towards Jon or potentially mis-hit it for it to go anywhere. The ball floated up outside of leg, he wound up to hit it into the Estuary - swung the bat completely missed it and was bowled round his legs.

The other bloke Sibley was a similar story, but without using the moon-ball approach, again he didn't seem phased by the Flippers or balls outside of off and was playing well, so with Jon still deep and Joe Cleveley at mid wicket I was tempted to push Joe out a bit and bowl a slower one leg-side. Sibley, went for it and didn't get anything on it, Joe had to track back a little and took a good full stretch catch.

Nishant then took 3 and we bowled them out in the 37th over.

I didn't think it was going to be a walk over for us to beat them and we eventually won by just one wicket. Tony Harms scoring the bulk of our runs as the opener (28).