On arriving for the first team's first Home
outing of the season they were keen to overcome the
disappointment of defeat in their season opener. Despite
many late arrivals to the ground, due to the players
forgetting to read emails or contact, skipper for the
day, Harris, Waltham were put into bat and made a steady
start.
Steve Farnon fell cheaply to a thin
edge from the livelier of the two Checkendon openers
but Harris and Jackson steadied and began to build their
innings. While not particularly quick, a slow trickle of
boundaries in amongst the forward defensives allowed
Waltham to reach 60-1 from 19 overs and an opportunity
to pick up the pace seemed viable. Sadly this was not
the case as, first Harris chased a wide one and snicked
to the keeper, then the middle order threw their wickets
away cheaply, only Matt Andrews 13 from 20 balls looking
like providing support to the unusually quiet Jacko.
When he finally lost patience and was caught,
other wickets fell and it was left to Matt Nebbett and
Rashid Arif to have a final bash, allowing Waltham to
limp to a poor score of 142-8 from 45 overs, on a pitch
which wasn't particularly favouring the bowlers. Indeed
all 8 wickets were Caught, such was the mistimed nature
of the batsmen.
Knowing
they needed a strong bowling display with some tight
fielding if they were to have a chance the opening over
from Harris only lowered spirits further with 3 boundaries
and poor bowling allowing 14-0 from 1 over. Fortunately
Rashid Arif had other ideas and bowled beautifully with
his one wicket, scant reward for a fine display of swing
bowling. With Jackson coming on and increasing the pace,
and the tidy England replacing Keith Lughart after a
tidy, but wicketless, 5 overs runs dried up.
A couple of wickets were added but with the bowling
of Jackson in many cases too good for the batsman and
in others producing a fine defensive display from the
solid batting of Acland-Hood, who was to record his
second 50 of the league season for Checkendon, wickets
failed to materialise.
At 126-4, only 17 runs
from defeat, skipper Harris had two last throws of the
dice tossing the ball to youngster Matt Andrews
and bringing himself back for a final blast. Suddenly
things started happening. First a close run-out decision
which went Checkendon's way, (and that is all I will
say about that) then Andrews breaks through.
At the other end Matt drops a catch then immediately
snaffles the next one and before you know it there was
one over left and Checkendon were 141-8. Some excellent
tight bowling from Andrews and something approaching
quicker bowling from Harris (well ok, the run-up was
long for a spinner) had put them in with a shout and
Harris was left bowling the final over....
Ball 1
- Dot ball
Ball 2
- WICKET!! - Harris bowls the in-batsman and number
11 is on his way
Ball 3
- Here goes, in he comes, fans on the edge of their
seats and......... WIDE BALL! (oops)
Ball 4
- Scores are level, pitches outside off stump, shooter,
no chance for Bridges behind the stumps, byes are run
and the game is lost.
So it
wasn't to be, a poor batting showing but a fantastic
team performance in the field, with everyone playing
for each other and supporting the bowling. Some good
individual performances with the ball and everyone needing
to get down to nets on Thurs to work on their batting.
Well done Checkendon, always a friendly team, can't
wait till the reply fixture.
MOM: Matt
Andrews (8 votes) |