Greys Unchallenged at Sunny (honest) Horsdean (updated, edited, filtered by Del)

Greys win by 61 runsDate: Sunday 24th June 2012 – Start Time: 14:00

I’ll let the opposition outline the day! They write……“A proper match against friendly opposition. Even the sun shone for a lot of the afternoon. In many ways, The Greys are a good match for The Crescent. They clearly love their cricket, although the sight of a team still in civvies taking catching practice, while The Crescent sorted out the pavilion, set out the boundary markers and generally shook hands and caught up with the news was a little disturbing. They are a delight to play against, sharing our attitude to encourage everyone to get into the game, dealing with the odd grievance (“that was never a wide” from a senior old fart who should know better) with tact and charm, and above all ready for a good laugh and a chat during and after the game. Greys batted first and, completely accidentally, lulled us into a false sense of security. They struggled for runs, with early bowling honours going to youngster Max Kidman (who was playing on one hour of sleep and a dodgy stomach that erupted during the tea interval) and Simon Wood (who we can assume was tucked up nice and early with a cup of cocoa and his copy of Wisden). Both finished with 2-20ish and bowled well. With John Gatford in Mr Reliable mode (with the occasional and much-loved Mr Grumpy interludes), Crescent were well in control for the first half of the innings as batsmen found the wet wicket and frequent low bounce troublesome. Things changed at the fall of the sixth wicket, probably just as Captain Mike Brown was wondering how to extend the innings to the tea interval. Enter Mr Covill, who we later learned is a top-order batsman lurking down the order as he was going to be required to bowl plenty of overs. Together with Mr Fenton who was holding the innings together from number 5, they put on plenty of runs in good time (the scorebook is unclear, but they more than doubled the score at the time), leaving Greys to declare on 161-9 at tea. Other bowling highlights were Gatford 1-39 and Beglan 1-33 as later bowlers took some tap from the unexpectedly excellent lower-order batting. Catching was not our strength (maybe we should follow the Greys example pre-match), with at least 3 going down before Greys had reached 30. Rick did manage to revive a neurone long enough to take a sharpish slip catch wide to his right and the run-out of the dangerous(sic) Fenton by Max was sharp and would probably have been missed by most of us playing on the day.”

The usual excellent Crescent tea (those scones – just the 40 of them – were delightful and just how many pork pies can be eaten during a cricket tea?), was followed by the beginnings of a solid Crescent chase on a slowly drying wicket as the sun had come out a little earlier. Terry and Benn were in little trouble but finding the boundary hard to reach when Terry fell unexpectedly for 9. Rick stuck around waiting for his only remaining shots – the pull and anything possible against a full toss – (thanks for pointing this out Mike…) to become possible. After a couple of fours (two pulls and a full-toss clipped through the leg side….) he inexplicably crashed a slow full-toss back to the bowler when 19. Benn had fallen for 13 by then and the innings slumped to 100 all out with cameos from Tom (13) and a revived (after his purging and some Crescent tea) Max who made 23.
Well done to Greys who kept the game open, thereby using our own tactics of tempting batsmen into indiscretions, against us and were worthy winners. They also stayed longer than many other sides after the game for a chat and when I left they outnumbered the Crescent stragglers.
That is what club cricket is all about.”

…What the Crescent didn’t know was that a few designated ‘minglers’ ,

(Is the ‘l’ a typo? – Ed), were providing a smoke-screen while Birthday Boy and Ricky were haring back to the Constant to bags a corner for the England–Italy semi; the only semi of the whole evening as it turned out 😦

Sewell was happy to have a captive audience on his special day and had been gifted the Party Seven for the balletic left-handed c&b of young Max. Sewell (3-27) and Azami (1-13) had effectively ended The Crescent’s chances of reaching their target, after Del and Ricky had opened without much luck. Illness and injury had robbed us of both regular openers, Illness and Injury. Fenton plugged the gap with a superb 1-5 from 12 overs!  Ibrahim must have been close with his c&b of Crescent batsman Rick, and Biff returned to catching well.

Let’s hope for more weather like this, ffs!

Now’
‘Lost’
‘Me’
‘She Got A Wiggle’
‘You’
‘Thinking Of You’
‘I’m Always Going To Love You’
‘Incapable Of Love’
‘Nowhere Is Home’
‘Free’
‘It’s OK John Joe’