Kingston Methodist Cricket Club
Riverside vs KMCC
3 May 2008
Cloudy and warm
Although we’re rarely late for a game, the busy lives of the KMCC team mean that
we almost never have 11 players present at the alloted time of 30 mins before the
start. True to form, at 1:45 on this Saturday there were about 9 of us milling about.
To be fair, many were confused by Team Sec’s email recycling policy -
Anyway, it was only the dimmest member of the team, ex-
After a week of heavy rain the wicket was damp and the outfield very grassy in Ewell, a typical early season environment.
We had another strong team out, minus the injured X4 but gaining Scott, Griffy and The Chairman. Cuttsy was left on the bench, but this was after an early mix up between him and opening partner Tom left him with a lot of spectating to do.
The accurate Riverside bowling meant we struggled to score runs at any pace, but
Tom Hayden and Dave Harry coped well enough. The wicket rewarded the pitched-
To be fair we never suffered a collapse, and with Dave accelerating past fifty for the second week in a row he was well supported in the middle order, Scott in particular playing some nice shots. Our score of 160 at declaration looked reasonable.
With the pitch still slow, our bowling strategy was to restrict the runs early on and then blast through with some quick wickets. Amazingly for one of our strategies, this worked.
Tom Hayden and Steve Harry opened the bowling and runs were indeed slow to come by,
with about 35 from the first 15 overs and a single wicket for Tom. It was then that
the sleek profile of Thunderbird 1 was winched out of the swimming pool in the shape
of Griff’s first spell of the year. Regular KMCC watchers might remember that T1’s
pilot and club treasurer has suffered his fair share of dodgy missions and blown
rocket engines over the years, but not today. As the batsmen tried to accelerate
they were mown down by a hail of accurate deliveries. Keeper and Alex aside, our
catching was its usual dodgy self but even without this Griff passed the all important
drinks-
Riverside’s strange decision to extend the game by applying 20 overs from about 7:15 had backfired as there were but three overs to go at the close (and it was dark). Credit to them however as they went for the runs from about half way through the innings. On 75 for 1 they must have fancied their chances, but once the swimming pool slid back it was Griff’s day and a 100% start to the season for us.