Middlesex Championship Division 3 (1st XI)
15th July 2006

1st Team turn the corner with well earned win against GWR.

Despite losing to GWR in the first game of the league season we put up a real fight and so rightly felt confident going into this match. There was a genuine buzz in the dressing room, as all involved knew GWR were there for the taking if we did the basics well, worked hard and played as a team. As it turned out, that’s exactly what happened.

I lost the toss (again!) and we were invited to bat. GWR’s skipper, obviously having had a look at our record at home, may have thought his team could put us in, bowl us out, knock ‘em off and be home by 5 o’clock. Well maybe that was the case earlier in the season, but with newfound discipline and belief in the side we are a totally different prospect these days.

The plan was simple – the top 3 were sent in with strict orders to do the best job possible on GWR’s opening bowlers, in particular Mr Viljoen – wear them down for 20 overs or so, take the shine off the ball and protect the shot players lower down the order. Not that the top 3 of Davies, N Ridgway and Buckley are incapable of playing shots of course, but on another difficult Broadfields wicket they did exactly what was required. After 21 overs we were 49 for 2 and in a good position with potentially 35 more overs to get a total. If we could bat those overs we knew we’d have a competitive total at the end of the innings. We didn’t quite manage to bat the full 55 – in fact we were 9 short of that but thanks to contributions from virtually everyone – top 3 already mentioned but also Rashid, Anaokar and Ridgway Snr) we ended our innings all out for 182.

I think GWR knew this was a good effort on a capricious wicket and all of a sudden they had a game on their hands. We also knew it was a good score and were in no mood to let GWR overhaul it after all our hard graft.

After tea, Skipper Lonnen opened but found it difficult to find any rhythm and consequently the right line or length and despite taking a wicket (shit takes wickets at any level!) soon took himself off to be replaced by Gillman. At the other end though Matt Ridgway was already well into what his Skipper believes his best spell of the season so far. Causing untold problems to GWR’s batsmen… Ably supported by Gillman the two of them bowled superbly, creating pressure for each other and brilliantly supported in the field – a great catch by Nick Ridgway in the covers set us on our way – wickets began to fall. It wasn’t the Ploughmans of old where once we got the smell of blood we ripped into teams with relish. That’s just not going to happen at this level, but we consistently took wickets and the only thorn in our side was the irrepressible Viljoen (him again!). Once he had gone though, courtesy of a plumb LBW decision after a shooter, there was only going to be one result. Rashid took 2 wickets in an excellent spell including the last GWR bat and we had bowled them out for 118. Matt ended one short of a deserved fivefer and Gillers took 3.

A thoroughly well deserved win as we played all the cricket and one that everyone should learn from…
But also remember when times are hard…

TL