A mixture of first teamers, seconds and debutants for Ploughmans gathered at Boston Manor for what was to be an enthralling contest of a 40 overs game against Elthorne CC.

Steve Britto walked out to the middle with the opposing team’s captain and won the toss. We elected to bat first. Britto and Leon opened the batting, we got off to a good start with a partnership of 41, both batsman had played themselves in and were running well between the wickets with some silky shots on what was a good batting wicket, however Leon popped a ball up to the bowler when he was on 11 and that was that. Jason Lloyd was in at number 3 and started and ended his innings in the same way, his first ball was smashed for 4 and as he tried to replicate the shot on the second ball he was bowled by a full toss from the slow armed spinner.

Ploughmans were 51-2 when Jacko entered proceedings with a bang, he played very well with Britto, both of them playing positively and collecting boundaries, they had put on some 30 runs together when Jacko played a shot to point and tried to make 2 runs when only one was available, he was duly run out. Britto was looking good, playing a very disciplined innings with some flair shots behind leg and square, and one which he hit over the bowlers head, one bounce and over the fence for four, we never recovered that ball. Steve was on for a big innings. Tom Lockhart was next in, our wicket keeper for the day. Lockhart played well with Britto and they put on 16 runs before Lockhart was adjudged LBW by Chris Feeney, we then lost the wickets of Sha and Brown in quick succession without troubling the bowlers much.

Sat Nav entered proceedings with Britto looking a bit relieved with the thought that he may have a partner that would stick with him for a bit longer than others gone before. It wasn’t long before Britto and Sat Nav started to apply themselves at the crease, it was forming into some kind of competition with who could hit the biggest six, if I remember correctly Britto hit a big one and then Tom launched a couple over the bowlers head, one fleeing some 20 yards outside the white line before landing in the adjoining pitch. Britto and Tom were cruising along when Britto came out to hit a ball and before he knew it was stumped for 71. Tom remained not out for 39, with Sri Vasta caught for 4 and Nataraju not out for 2. Ploughmans had put 176-8 on the board and it was time for tea.

After Tea, Ploughmans made there way onto the field with Britto leading the charge and giving words of wisdom to his troops, we needed to cut out the extra’s and field well to defend this total. Jasper and Sat Nav opened the bowling against Elthorne, we kept runs down to a minimum for the first ten over with both bowlers line and length spot on, backed up with some great fielding all around the ground. Tom Lockhart did particularly well behind the stumps saving a few down leg side. We had a couple of dropped catches to contend with and were rewarded with a couple of wickets. We had the oppo down to 29-2. We were on top then there were a couple of bowling changes and Elthorne picked up the loose balls and started hitting out, they got to 20 overs with a score of around 90, so the match was evenly balanced, then things started to go against us with a few mis-fields and some lacklustre bowling. Britto brought on Jacko (by this stage it was all too late) who bowled a line and length that we were looking for all afternoon and was rewarded with his first wicket for Ploughmans.

To be fair Elthorne played well off the backfoot and won the game with 5 overs to spare, you could say that we were 20 runs short of putting on a competitive total.

In all it was a good days crickets, enjoyed by all, which was played in great spirit.

SH