SCORECARD

Super Sports
Fitmen 127 all out (29.4 of 30 overs), Sportsman 128 -8 (28 overs)
Sportsman won by 2 wickets.

It’s not often over the last few years that The Fitmen have struggled to field a full side, and even rarer (if ever?) that the club hasn’t fulfilled a fixture due to numbers. But this came mighty close!

Many teams in league and friendlies scratched this weekend due to World Cup viewing plans made the previous week. Even though Ingerland elected to go through second and therefore play Sunday, this Saturday fixture was in doubt as early as Monday when club interior designer Guy had already received 16 ‘not available’ texts!

However.........our thanks to the ‘last minuters’ who made up enough numbers to make a game of it on the hottest day of the year so far.

This was the 4th of a 5 ‘test’ series against The Sportsman, and at 2 down and one washed out you’d think it a dead rubber. The intrepid eight had a different view and on the ‘postage stamp’ next to the White Swan showed their metal.

The wicket, as usual up and down like a sailors trousers, meant that even when you were in you were as like as not just a ball away from being out.

The Fitmen ‘won’ the toss -well it was fixed really and we batted first in a match sportingly reduced to 30 overs to accommodate the quantity of padded warriors and the footy at 7.30 nobily won by Ghana in extra time despite Clinton’s exhortations.

The opening pair (Jack and Raj) looked comfortable enough, but you just knew there would be a shooter round the corner or the deviation off a clump of parsley waiting for you.

Jack duly got one of those and scored 60 less than he did midweek! The star of the innings was undoubtedly Raj, who wickets regularly tumbling all around him kept to the script and anchored the innings with a superb 39 without which we were...well screwed!

All around him the batsmen chipped in, but then got out.

Rob Green was on a mission to produce a pretty pattern in the score book aiming to place 5 dots in between each of three 4s - only to mess up the pattern with a late 2 and a single. Tom pushed it around for another double figure effort as did Josh and the big hitting Dan towards the end.

Having described himself as a ‘blocker’ the muscle man Dan almost took the cover off the ball a couple of times. He followed this with a valiant effort to get back to the pavilion convinced he’d been run out only to find the skipper had been caught and bowled off a screamer and that he was safe despite backing up 12 yards from safety.

Good application from all the batsmen – apart from Caesar senior (duck) and Jowett who went one better (if you know what I mean) with a golden. However, The Sportsmen, recognising they were both crap, sportingly invited them back in for another go since we were a couple of batsmen light. They were clearly good judges of ability and the pair of them slapped a 4 to get their run rate up and promptly got themselves out again.

So – a target of 127 was set.

Bolstered by an extra couple of volunteer fielders supplied from ‘the pool’ it was going to be tough to defend even on a pitch misbehaving.

However, the bowling side had other ideas. A tight start from Caesar Snr and Dan ‘the man’ quickly gave the hosts the message that we weren’t for rolling over. 4.5 an over doesn’t sound much, but on 69-7 the visitors scented a famous victory.

2 wickets for Dan, 2 for the skip of the day, 3 for Jowett (atonement?) and one for Josh brought the Fitmen not just respectability but to the brink of a win. Outstanding keeping saw Tom bag 50 fantasy points (2 stumpings and 2 catches) and committed fielding meant that on an ultra hot late afternoon it would take some graft for the Sportsman to get across the line.

A fitting end to the match was the 8th wicket stand from the Sporting Veterans. Despite some hot weather sledging from Tucker’s Apprentice, combined with the FitMasterBatsmen losing it with the umpire for ‘widing’ him the home side made it. Their No 8 and 9 (though they didn’t fool us and were clearly usually upper middle order types!) put on a slow but sure 50 before drama at the end when Josh broke the partnership with the score level.

Could the match have one final twist with a hat trick to win? .................No! The winning run was a wide after part time bowler Jack experimented to see how wide he could get before the umpire lost it and called it a day. The answer was – quite wide really!

Our thanks to the Sportsmen loan fielders – one of whom bagged a nice catch for us. The final match of the never ending series is in August – but with home advantage this time, it will draw a capacity gate at Ashfield.