Revenge Is Sweet...........

The 2nd eleven arrived at Goldenacre still reeling from their poor performance the previous week. We only had one goal in sight. Revenge....... Oh and we had a club night out in the capital after the game. Team bonding was the call and what better time to arrange it, than when all 3 teams were in the city, so why not...
An early start was arranged so that we would start simultaneously with the 1s who were also playing at Goldenacre.
Unfortunately this never occurred as Mike W had forgotten to inform Wayne that we had an early start. Wayne didn’t appear until about quarter past 12. On his arrival he was informed that Mike had lost the toss.......AGAIN and he was opening.

Again the batting didn’t go to plan. Robbie fell early when he miss timed a full toss and was caught. No runs on the board and 1 wicket down.
Geordie and Wayne then had a decent but slow partnership. There partnership had added 51 to the score but it did take them 20 overs. Both batsmen were caught trying to push on the run rate. Wayne scored 28 & Geordie 23. This led to the weekly top order collapse as both myself and Cameron gave our wickets up cheaply and we were in trouble at 62 for 5. Scuba & Craigie moved the score along at a nice pace but once again wickets fell at the wrong time. We were 90 for 5 then in the space of 5 overs we were toiling at 100 for 8. Only some big hitting from Grant(22) and sensible batting from Scuba(28) seen us finish up on 140 all out after 42.5 overs. Again we did not bat our alloted overs. 140 was around 100 runs short of par as the track was perfect for batting.

Heads were down at half time but we had the belief that our bowling and fielding unit was better than there batting. We knew they had a couple of big wickets and if we got them early we would have a right good chance.

Bowling went to plan.... Mike W managed to entice the dangerous Jammy Nasir with a wide and he was neatly caught by Tam. Their other opener was trying to avoid facing Grants pace and was run out trying to escape. 17 for 2 and we were into their tail. We only had one scalp (Nagi)to get and the game was ours for the taking.
Mike continued to bowl with great accuracy and wickets fell when two of the opposition players left the ball on middle stump. Nagi was still looking dangerous and when he was joined by Steve Coulson he eventually had a partner that may have endangered our poultry total of 140.
It was time for Wayne "the trundler" Sullivan. After 5 overs from Wayne Nagi decided to loft him straight back over his head for six. Luckily for Wayne we had Shovel Hands Porteous on the long off boundary who snapped up the chance. Nagi gone for 31. All we had to do now was be ruthless. Geordie bowled well taking two scalps, Craigie had a little cameo bowl claiming another wicket. However it was our captain who led by example and stole the show. Mike ended up with 5 for 19 off his 6.2 overs and it was fitting that he got the last wicket to ensure the win. Drummond all out for 89.

This really was an excellent fielding and bowling display. We bowled in the right areas and made the batsmen make the mistakes. In the field we showed great energy, enthusiasm, anticipation and concentration. The fact that there was no dropped catches or mis-fields shows what we are capable of and if we can reproduce this more consistently their will not be a team in this league who can compete with us.

The batting remains a concern but from the many discussions after the game we know what we need to improve on and everyone seems to be pulling in the same direction.

Excellent victory lads well done.......

Shame I cant say the same about the dancing performance's on the night out...

Mike