SCORECARD

Young Lions 211-1 beat Fitmen 208-7 by 9 wickets

It is sometimes tough being captain. Two games in a row both ending in comprehensive defeats; yet both shared the same characteristics of us being blown away by batsman patently superior to our level of cricket. Indeed at the half way stage, the Fitmen had every reason to be satisfied with a score of 208 after our 40 overs.

It was a beautiful summer’s day at Moseley, with a sizeable “away” contingent providing admiral support to the opposition. However, judging from the pre-match drills of the opposition players, it appeared that they were pretty confident in providing them with a revenge win in this “friendly”. The last time the two teams played, the Fitmen won comfortably after their skipper, having unwisely underestimated us, decided to reverse his batting order a bit. Yet the two sides had appeared to be evenly matched in that game. It was disappointing therefore to find that they went to the other extreme and decided to call upon batsman who were just too good.

We had won the toss and decided to do the right thing and bat first at the “graveyard”, despite their captain begging me to let them bat (for reasons which only became apparent afterwards). The sun was out and the pitch made for batting. Tom continued where he left off in the last game and played excellently displaying a range of classical strokes. Tahir provided great support and these two combined to put on a big partnership and both achieved well deserved 50s. Towards the back end of the innings, Butch chipped in but we were probably slightly disappointed not to score another 10-15 runs after the platform which was built.

The competitiveness of the match ended once the tea break was over. The 2 openers were both clearly very good and were timing the ball superbly. Guy eventually achieved the breakthrough with one which the batsman attempted to drive through covers but got a thickish edge and was very well caught at 2nd slip by Butch. Any hope the Fitman had disappeared as the other opener went on to score an unbeaten 100 and the number 3 also chipped in with a useful 80 odd (should have been out earlier but we’ll come to that later) and no more further wickets went down. We tried various options but any questions asked of the batsman was answered well. What also didn’t help was losing the new ball very early on and so we could not get any assistance from even the ball as nothing was happening off the pitch. The score was chased down pretty comfortably in the end.

Moment of the Day

Everybody will remember the great South African fielder (well he was a batsman remembered for his fielding) Jonty Rhodes, whose grace and athleticism raised the benchmark of fielding to new heights. One will especially recollect the sight of Jonty Rhodes picking up the ball from point and diving with his whole body forward and shattering the stumps with ball still in hand. Well, I can officially reveal that this benchmark has now been surpassed by our very own Tom Caesar. The Batsman pushed the ball in to the covers and scampered down the pitch, only to be told by his partner to go back. Consequently the batsman slipped mid-pitch and this left the formality of a run out to be affected. It all started off OK enough; Tom picked the ball up and it all started to go wrong from there. Having seen the batsman slip, Tom prevaricated and was caught between lobbing the ball to Tucker (waiting expectantly behind the stumps), or to run with the ball himself and knock down the stumps. Sufficient time was available for both. Eventually Tom took the latter course of action, but inexplicably (including to poor Tom) he then decided to flick-throw the ball on the stumps from 10cm away and managed to completely miss the bails! It would have probably only been academic so no serious harm done and Tom is normally such a good fielder that I’m sure this indiscretion will be forgiven (but not forgotten so we can keep ribbing him about it).