SCCC 255-9: Blade 70 odd; Alex Patmore 44; Shakey 40.
York 170ish ao: Dicko 3 fer; Lal 3 fer
We won the toss and batted on a lovely hot day in York. Joe and Alex got off to a steady start before Joe got bogged down and was out slogging to Kay. I didn't last much longer victim (if I do say so myself) to an atrocious lbw decision – I wont go on about it but needless to say I bored the pants of everybody talking about it on Saturday. Blade came in at 4 and immediately raced to 30 in about 20 balls. Alex played very solidly and gave good support but came undone by a slow bouncer gloving it to slip for a well deserved 44. Fully deserved a 50. Shakey came in and batted very well mixing some super shots with a few alternative ones that only shakey can produce. Shakey looked odds on to get a deserved 50 before heaving at the wrong ball and was out caught. Blade continued to bat effortlessly before tiredness and a bad back resulted in a lazy drive straight to cover. Wickets tumbled but a partnership of 40 odd by nads and ben fiddler got us up to our highest score for the season. Well done lads though probably just under par on a good batting track and quick outfield. Nice to get over 150 for a change though!
We needed to get quick wickets to stand a chance against York’s strong batting line up. We did, nads producing some scintillating balls and finally castled their opener in his third over. Ben picked up the key wicket of Broadbent who was attempting a heinous slog and missed a straight one. Nads picked up mason in the deep (excellent catch by Tommy B) just when he started to look dangerous and then Dicko came on and took two quick wickets. 120-6 it seemed all over especially as their captain- wood- wasn’t batting due to twisted ankle. Kay however, had other ideas and batted very well, he scored a run a ball 70 before Lal came back and produced a beauty to bowl him. Big sigh of relief as the other two wickets went pretty quickly after.
Great performance by Blade, Shakey, Nads and Albert to get us a total and good disciplined bowling especially by Ben, Lal and Dicko against the best batting team in the league to restrict the big hitters.
This year we have beaten the top 3, but produced poor displays against the lower teams. Hopefully, if we can consistently get over 200 next year a top 5 finish would not be unreasonable. One more game to go, another win will see us finish in mid table, which would be a good effort considering the amount of players we have lost/ unavailable etc.