SCCC 219-5. Dearne not many for 9. 5 points.....The team did spuds in at Abbeydale for who would be this week's skipper on the field. Since he had yet to arrive at the ground, Rooty lost and was therefore handed the honour, vacated the previous week by Stewie. There were less web inches of comment about Sir Alex Fergusons potential resignation 3 months ago than Stewie's impassioned explanation of his thinking behind his move on this web site last week. "Baby about to drop", "Concentration on his game", "Not enjoying it" etc etc - whereas we all know from Sealy that as Stewie is a teacher, he probably needs more time to do his marking and anyway the caravan probably needs cleaning down for the summer pilgrimage to Rhyll at the start of the summer hols.
Anyway to the cricket, nothing much happened until......
Rooty (who used to be a teacher before he began selling things to tighten up middle aged womens' what-not's so they don't wee when coughing) lost the toss. We batted and by and large you would have to say we did so pretty well.

Matt got 31. This led to Stewie's(27)comment that we should start calling Matt "Mr 20 something", as he always gets "20 something" each week. Work that out if you can!
Renners batted really well and on a slow track and long outfield his 85 was worth a ton at most grounds. Unfortunately he pulled three muscles in his left leg, to go with the 4 pulled muscles and a damaged fetlock that he already had in his right, in doing so. As an 'advanced games' teacher his fitness levels have some way to go to maintain the standards set by one or two of the other players, like Jonesey, Hespey, Ibbo & co. Ashy hit 24 and Butts hit some really good shots in an entertaining 35 no at the end, Most notable in the opposition's camp was their wicketkeeper, who was clearly on some sort of day release from hospital, but apart from him the Dearne lads were fine. Their overseas player is apparently captain of the Pakistan baseball team which is a bit like picking your pro because he is captain of the Chilean synchronised swimming quintet. He was very athletic and appealed alot but did not have much success with either bat or ball. 219 - 5 was a big score on this large, traditional ground, that must have been quite a place when there was some money to spend on it.

Jones, Hespe and Ibbo, reduced the opposition to 58 - 8, but since they were a decent set of lads and had given us a good tea, we decided not to bowl them out and so took only 5 points instead of 7.
Oh how important those 2 points could be at the end of the season.
Of note in the second innings was the captains remark, when the opposition were 4 wickets down, "come on lads, one more wicket and we'll have number 5 padding up" (did he mean number 9?). But then we did mention earlier that Rooty too was a teacher once.
We are 5th in the league - heady stuff!. We have had, it has to be said, a fairly gentle fixture list so far, but if Renners and Hespey can strap their artificial legs on until their various tears and pulls get better, and we do not loose too many players to Ketts when Gaylord is busy marking too, we might do OK this year and even give one or two of the big boys a run for their money.