Concorde v Thames Valley Ramblers

Match Report

This weekend saw the return of the Camberley boys to compensate for the non availability of regulars like Nick Freeman, George Howard, Rob Symondson and Nikhill. Nevertheless, we were still four short on Friday when Simon Griffiths and younger son, Tom stepped in and Jerry Stockbridge deemed himself sufficiently recovered from illness to return to battle. Although we still took to the field one short, the younger Lesser son, Cameron who is aged 9, agreed to field for us.

TVR won the toss and we were asked to bat for the second week in a row. Edgar opened with Adam Carter on a very damp and pudding like wicket against some very respectable opening bowling which made runs very difficult to come by and the first 30 runs were very hard earned. Adam played a patient and watchful role and whilst Ed was similar, he was savage on anything short and crashed 4 firm boundaries before both he and Adam departed to catches, in Ed’s case an extraordinary effort by short square leg who took an instinctive catch at waist height off the meat of the bat. Ed departed shaking his head at the sheer unfairness of the world.

Brandon, batting at 3 took some time to play himself in but once set played a beautifully judged innings, picking up singles and two’s whilst never taking any chances before expanding his shots to the boundary. After his Century, Ashley was bursting with confidence and after an early bit of luck began to make batting look easy in contrast to all other batsmen before him. To be fair, the wicket had dried out a bit as the afternoon wore on to make batting easier but there was always the odd one that never got off the ground to keep one on one ones toes but together Brandon and Ash accelerated both passing 50 and taking the score beyond 150 before Brandon was caught for a superb 62.

Josh joined Ash but was rather unfortunate to be adjudged run out for 5. Jerry joined Ash and sat back at one end while Ash went on the rampage smashing boundary after boundary and taking the score to 201 before Jerry was rather harshly stumped off the last ball of the innings whilst walking off the wicket to tea. Should have know better really and waited for the umpire to call over.

The Concorde bowling was opened by Adam and Brandon and both looked a real handful. Bowling at a succession of very competent and confident batsmen, they combined beautifully as Adam kept one end very tight with his pace while at the other end, Brandon, only marginally slower, began to run through the opposing top order. With the score at 28 – 5, Brandon had all 5 wickets which was to his credit but a very poor reward for Adam who had played a very important role.

Edgar replaced Brandon and found a good line and length which eventually persuaded the batsman to loft him to deep square leg where he was caught in a casually confident manner by who else but – Brandon. Not content to be left out, Adam chipped in with a lovely piece of fielding and threw down the stumps to get rid of another.

Young Tom Griffith replaced Adam and bowled a very tidy 4 overs for 11 runs before turning his ancle and hobbling off. He was replaced by the diminutive Cameron Lesser who makes up for a lack of height with a huge amount of confidence. Not content with sprinting round the field at surprising speed, he put most of his elders to shame with the power of his arm from the boundary and displayed his confidence by demanding a bowl from his Captain who was sufficiently intimidated to agree. His two overs cost only 3 runs and he was played with enormous care by the TVR batsman, no doubt mindful that getting out to a 9 year old might lead to some off field humiliation.

Jerry Wright bowled a couple of innocuous overs before business returned to normal with the return of Adam and Brandon with 10 overs left to finish off the innings. Adam now gained some reward by picking up two wickets, both clean bowled and at 109 – 9 and five overs to go, surely the game was ours. But old foe, Paul Smith, played the spoilsport as he has done so many times before by stealing the strike expertly and repulsing all further attempts to end the game in our favour.

A draw was not really a true reflection of the game but leant weight to our policy of always playing timed cricket so that a losing side always has something to play for to the bitter end and thus keeping the game interesting. It was, in fact, what few other sports can provide – an exciting draw!

So, a superb all round performance from Brandon with a score in excess of fifty plus 5 – 34 and an excellent catch and another illustration of the enigma that is Ashley Westen who professes to find cricket a bit boring if played too often and yet can turn up and score effortless runs at the drop of a hat. Imagine what he could achieve if he took it seriously!