North Devon 27 August 2019

Captain James Basford

Lost by 2 wickets

SOA 200 for 9 dec (Junnaid Aziz 68, Bruce Lunn 42)

North Devon 201 for 8 (Ethan Davie 3 for 56)

SOA made their second visit of the tour to NDCC on a bright but cool day, no change there, and following a conspired toss the visitors elected to bat on a greener wicket than the previous day with hopefully a bit more pace. Junaid(68) and Bruce Lunn(62) set off at a steady pace both making half centuries but following the departure of Lunn at 128 it was decided to try and inject some pace to the innings bearing in mind the hard hitting Aussie in the opposition’s ranks. Apart from a brisk 21 from Alexander Basford the rest of the order never got going, most looking to exit the ground rapidly to review their dismissal on the video cam. A declaration on 200 was probably 50 light but with the new tea lady’s spread waiting the skipper had little choice.

Early inroads left NDCC on 40 for 3 including the bouncing out of 14 year old Carrick that can only be described as assault by Basford sending the youngster walking towards the nets in tears and kicking his gloves. This incident only bought Aussie Isherwood to the crease and he promptly set about his task with relish clubbing the visitors tidy attack to all parts along with opener Popham(57) they took the score to 150. The introduction of veteran swinger Ian Ramsay lead to one of the more amusing moments of the match as Ramsey sneaked one through the defences of Isherwood(80) as he aimed to project the ball to Appledore, Ramsey following through giving the bemused batsman the ‘send off’ A chink of light, Ethan ‘Jaffa’ Davie (3/56) the pick of the attack was getting appreciable turn and a clatter of wickets sent the home skipper frantically running back to the dressing room to change out of his shorts, but the tail hung on to inch home by 2 wickets.