It was a cold and wet weekend, but somehow the rain gods were appeased enough for the Men of the Plough to stake a claim to some valuable early season points. Unfortunately, in the end, the Youth Wing XI simply blew us away more forceful than the strong winds whistling over our heads after some early season jitters with the bat….

The Plough started off spritely enough. Both Faz and Leon playing some watchful intelligent cricket, especially under the dark and wet conditions on a pitch greener than something that just came out of my nose whilst sitting here thinking about the best words to describe this game. Youth Wing were conceding quite a few extras, while our openers went out hitting anything loose to keep the run rate ticking over nicely.

The fifty came up for the loss of no wicket. The foundations had been built to set them a decent total to defend, especially with the inconsistent bounce of the pitch, anything over 160-170 was going to be a tough task. 

Unfortunately that’s about where it ended for our boys. Instead of playing watchful innings’, one by one we came tumbling down. From 0/50, all of a sudden we were 5/57 before we could even blink. Leon went lbw, before a freakish runout by a guy in their team who usually takes over the wicket keeping duties throwing one straight over the stumps to have Steve walking back. Rich started playing some confident shots before one popped up on him and was caught at slip. Yours truly had an absolute shocker out for a golden quack, only to have the tie snatched from my grasp before I could get my hands on it by Spence. It was up to Shah and Soupy to try and stop the rot. Tony playing some very confident shots with the watchful Shah waiting for the right balls to play before he was bowled. Coxy tried to hold up the other end for Tony to get some ever more valuable runs, but in the end it was all too much for the boys, finally succumbing to the Youth Wing, all out for 107.

As for their innings. It was over before we could blink. Tony and Coxy trying valiantly to get breakthroughs with Tony rapping their star batsman on the fingers (was nicely bruised after the game!). But, it was already almost too late after getting one of their openers to play on with the guy at the other end plundering-a-sunder. 17 overs later they had reached our total with their opener ending up with 72.

Hopefully we can put this down to the early season jitters. As long as we all learn from this, I’m sure in the weeks to come if we all dig our heals in and bat 45-50 overs there will be some great victories ahead. What doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger so looking forward to some gritty Ploughmans innings in the weeks to come

PF