On a beautiful day for cricket the thirds headed to Kirby to take on one of the league leaders. Were they better than us? Yes. Did they produce a tea? Yes. Did we hold our heads up, kept our standards high and give them a scare? Yes.
Having arrived at half 12 to find no opposition and the obligatory football pitch markings over the outfield, we came second at the toss, with Kirby deciding to have a bat.
Starting with the experienced openers of Leigh Garner and Calum MacLeod lines were tight, but anything remotely loose was severely punished by the openers. One particular ball being hit so hard it might have reached Harwich by now. However, the breakthrough came with Garner continuing his excellent form, bowling one opener and then almost immediately having the second opener caught by a wonderful challenging catch in the deep by Alhat, leaving the home team at 37-2.
The opposition then put on a stand of 34, seeing off MacLeod and his spell of bowling that will live long in the ages - on another day he’ll bowl much worse and get a bucket of wickets, but he was ‘almost’ too good, finishing with figures of 0-27 off his 9 overs and Garner finishing with 2-42 from his 8.
The change of bowling proved the breakthrough with the contrasting styles of Calley Foyster and the express pace and significant height of Thomas Mellon from the other.
Foyster immediately worked her magic, bringing on 2 quick LBW decisions, both of which were plumb. Mellon then made a breakthrough from his end, clean bowling and leaving the opposition on 82-5. More bowling pressure was put on, so much so that the opposition took one quick single too many - picking out the fan tasting Alhat who picked up and threw down the stumps in one motion leaving a batter well short of his ground.
Foyster continued to cause all kinds of issues, placing her field perfectly for Karl the juggler Parker to take a catch at cow corner on the second attempt. Mellon then induced an identical shot his end to the safe hands of MacLeod, before his pace proved far too much for the lower order- another batter having their stumps rearranged before he wrapped up the innings with some body line bowling the number 11 could only fence to Will Sherry to take the catch.
All in the home team finished on 154 all out from 31 overs. Mellon finishing with career best figures of 4-33
After a provided tea the team went out to bat facing a challenging target but knowing that knuckling down could give us a good chance.
Johnston missed the ‘knuckle down’ memo however and was soon removed by a quick inswinger which moved approximately 4 foot at pace.
Lockhart was joined at the crease by MacLeod and the two of them showed the discipline lacking in Johnstons ‘innings’ - putting on a fantastic partnership of 77 and rolling the cricket back to the 1970’s showing that Baz ball is over-rated. They ran quickly, with Lockhart putting away the bad balls.
Lockhart was then given out LBW, hit in front with no disagreement just before drinks leaving Braintree 79-2. This unfortunately opened the door to the opposition, and they put their excellent right through it. Macleod was bowled trying to push on and then the dashers came in, with everyone being bowled including by some savage swing bowling.
Eventually we fell short of our target after some lower order biffing.
A steep learning curve for us, but every single player played brilliantly and should be proud of the performance