Embedded Files
Beckman celebration number one... more of them later...
After all of this early excitement, Bartle plugged away intelligently on a good length, taking the wicket of Thacker, caught by an increasingly confident Dolphin at midwicket. All highly impressive. And with Seaton and the captain making decent stops in the infield, it all looked rather promising.
The game then slipped from our grasp against the Bearded Wonders of Rochester. The unlikely pair seemed nervy early on and a couple of chances went begging. But as they grew in confidence, Fromson in particular was quick to take advantage of any loose bowling (usually by square cutting the ball through mid on... it was that kind of pitch/day). The Dolphin was having one of his less profitable days with the ball and even Seaton went for a few too many runs in his spell of four overs.
Standage traps Pravin on the crease for 15...
In between times, Standage trapped the ambitious Pravin on his crease while Piercy was done by a savage Beckman inswinger. Cue the Beckmanator's traditionally menacing celebrations.
Oh, so it really was THAT bad, was it then?
NTMCC suffered a collective meltdown and crashed to a massive 159 run defeat at the hands of the Earl of Rochester's XI. As the Earl himself commented after the game "You boys took one hell of a beating".
And the day had started so well. ER II had reduced themselves to 60-6 through a combination of cavalier strokeplay and wanton disregard for the value of their own wickets. Of course, Standage and debutant Greenwood had put the ball in the right nplaces, but it was the catching which stood out. Seaton snaffled two catches in the extra cover region and Ed took a steepling one off Banana Beckman.
A Ammir: 4-0-13-4
A Asgard: 4-0-6-2
N Thacker: 4-2-7-1
J Banks: 3-0-20-2
L Montgomery: 4-0-4-0
P Pravin: 1-0-9-1
T Greenwood: 7-0-40-1
J Standage: 8-1-49-3
S Bartle: 7-0-40-2
J Beckman: 8-1-27-3
L Critchley: 4-0-43-0
S Gordon: 4-0-26-0
T Muttukumaru: 1-0-1-1
Bartle gets hit by one of the Bearded Wonders...
Jon made the breakthrough, bowling Montgomery for 33. Monty looked crestfallen, as if he'd just discovered Rommel had another 20 panzer divisions parked just up the road. Jon went ballistic, trying a giant flying high five with Ed. Most people would be slightly nervous at a flying Beckman, but Ed seemed to take it all in his stride, flattening the Beckmanator on his back with the most powerful high five since Courteney Walsh left the Test arena.
The Beckmanator gets high fived into oblivion by Ed Duncan...
Jesting aside, this was quite a useful wicket. Ammir didn't trouble the scorers and when Bartle trapped Fromson lbw for a magnificent 81, the innings was all but over. Bontrigh launched a couple of boundaries but the skipper spotted an easy wicket as Fornieles prepared to face his first ball in cricket... ever. After receiving a brief tutorial from Bontrigh [insert uncharitable but harmless comment about the blind leading the blind here], Fornieles shaped up to face NTMCC's finest wicket-thief. After gloriously missing his first ball, he made the mistake of missing the second, unerringly straight delivery which terminated the innings on 226. Which was rather more than we had intended to chase.
Duncan and Housden were sent in to open and things got off to a bad start when Ed's luckless run of form continued, playing back to one that kept low. Stanton joined Housden at the crease to cries of "You don't know what you're doing!" from the unhelpful Bartle. Bartle then called Stanton's girlfriend Hannah to ask whether she'd like to come and watch him batting. She obviously expressed a certain scepticism about whether this was a good idea. Bartle demurred that "Yeah, he'll be out soon anyway". Unfortunately for us, Bartle was right. 6-2 became 7-3 as Housden became Ammir's third victim, caught for just 2.
At this point, Ammir was being made to look like Waqar Younis by the batsmen. Not wanting to buck the trend, the captain attempted to hit the ball to St Albans and was bowled by another grubber for 6. Ammir celebrated like he was Waqar Younis. The former Surrey man muttered something about uncovered pitches and never having got to play against Zimbabwe's 14th choice XI.
The responsible skipper misses the ball by about 2 feet and is bowled
Meanwhile, The Dolphin was pondering whether Asgard's name had more to do with Lord of the Rings or the Norse realm of the Gods. The opening bowler himself was bowling a very tidy spell without much luck, but that soon changed when Regis was hit on the pad. A muffled appeal was upheld by Umpire Housden, whose version of events ("That was so plum I could have made a crumble with it") was slightly different from Regis ("**** **** **** **** ****").
Regis is caught right in front of middle/ never out in 3 million years...
Standage accelerated the team's demise with a lusty swing to his second ball and was caught in the infield. A change of bowling brought no change in fortune as the Beckmanator also fell early, caught expertly at slip for a relatively impressive 3. At this point, it was all going a bit London Erratics for NTMCC. No one was dusting off the record books. Not so much because we weren't interested, it was just that we knew that a record defeat was on the cards at 27-7. Muttukumaru's 6-ball innings of 6 was, at this point, the highest score in the book.
Jon is unlucky to be caught by an inspired ER II side...
Thankfully, the captain's score was soon exceeded. First, by Extras, shortly followed by Byes, whose contribution of 8 rescued us from a very sticky patch. Seaton then offered some lively resistance, carefully selecting a range of targets in the onside for dissection, Banks taking the brunt of this assault. This was, of course, bound to end in tears and so it did, with Seaton's score on a quite stratospheric 22.
Critchley and Greenwood happy-slapped a couple more fours, Tom justifying his selection as a 'late order hitter'. The Laser's boundary, chopped to the cover fence off Thacker, was probably the highlight of the innings (along with the tender words exchanged between Housden and Regis after the game). Anyway, the innings was rounded off with both batsmen being caught in the infield, the innocent Bartle left on a defiant 5 not out.
Rare runs as the Dolphin crashes a boundary through the offside...
Hmm, a match summary? We bowled fairly well at the start and fielded very well throughout. What we didn't do was restrict the opposition's score enough. While some might say that we lacked the 'killer instinct', dismissing the opposition for 100 didn't look like it would make for a very good game. Instead we settled for chasing 200+. This would have been acceptable if we hadn't then proceeded to bat, collectively, like a drain. There was some decent bowling for sure, but it wasn't the strongest attack that we faced this season by any stretch. No one really knuckled down and some of the more established batsmen (I'm thinking of those in the no.5 region in particular) would have done well to check the score before being so ambitious early on.
Good debut from Tom Greenwood, dusting off the cobwebs to bowl some tidy overs at the top of the innings. Another fine spell of aggressive bowling from Spud too - I will do the keeping in his stead in future! Jon and Simon produced impressive figures too, which were fully justified by their lively spells. I suppose we have to thank Seaton for a large proportion of our runs, though I would expect he will be itching to get his maiden 50 for us before the season is out...
All in all, it was still an enjoyable match. Let's hope to get into the winning habit on Bank Holiday Sunday, 29 August. Let me know if you can play.
Fantasy League Points
E Duncan: -5
O Housden: 2
M Stanton: 2
S Gordon: 32
T Muttukumaru: 26
T Regis: 6
J Standage: 50
J Beckman: 63
L Critchley: 10
T Greenwwood: 28
S Bartle: 45
Club Man Points
E Duncan: 2 (umpiring, late call-up)
O Housden: 1 (umpiring... ***don't kill me Regis***)
M Stanton: 1 (scoring)
S Gordon: 0
T Regis: 1 (umpiring)
J Standage: 1 (umpiring)
J Beckman: 1 (umpiring)
L Critchley: 3 (scoring, taking and bringing kit)
T Greenwwood: 1 (late call up)
S Bartle: 2 (scoring)
Supporters' Points
C Lees: 1 (valiant attempt to attend, denied by burst tyre!)
H Walker Gore: 3
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