Concorde v Nomads

Match Report

The first thing to greet our eyes on arriving at the ground was a set of three, bright green, brand new, wheeled covers which have been procured by the Chairman using some form of grant. These certainly give the ground an air of professionalism which will most surely intimidate any arriving opposition. Starting next week, of course, because it most certainly did work that way this week which was a most disappointing performance.

And it all started so well! Nomads won the toss and elected to bat and in the face of some very quick bowling from Dukie and some canny bowling from Matt Hallam both chances and runs came in abundance. Matt in particular induced a number of false strokes which were just out of reach and in what seemed the blink of an eye the score had reached 40 before a chance off Matt was finally taken.

The no 3 looked ominously good and he began to hit some good drives but Dukie was into his work now and a cleverly disguised slower ball was driven to mid on where Pat took the catch. A few more runs and a quick ball from Dukie took the edge and was taken by Adam at 3rd slip to which position he had been moved only 2 balls previously. The score was now 90 – 3 and then began an extraordinary turn around as Brandon and Adam swept through the Nomads batting like twin tornado’s taking 7 wickets between them for to bowl out Nomads for only 108. In the process, catches were taken by Brandon (2) Nigel Wright and Nick Freeman (2) of which one was a high ball taken with absolute certainty!

An easy and quick win looked on the cards but having played Nomads on many previous occasions, the Skipper was wary and warned his team to beware. Edgar and Chris Patterson opened and whilst nothing looked easy against a pacy attack, we made a solid start. Ed was watchful but attacked anything loose and when Chris went for 6 the score looked a respectable 35 for 1 and there was little of the mayhem to come. Brandon dug in but was clearly having difficulty in getting the ball away in the face of some considerable swing and seam movement as well as a slow, damp wicket and when he fell for a hard earned 2, the innings imploded.

The Nomads bowling ripped through the Concorde batting like a knife through butter assisted, it must be said, by some pretty poor technique against the moving ball. Lack of foot movement left batsman after batsman stranded on the crease and at the mercy of the extravagant movement with the result that the remaining 8 wickets fell without much of a fight and the Concorde innings closed on a total of 66 of which Edgar had provided 28. The next highest score was Pat with 9 via a flashing cover drive and a splendidly struck drive over third slip. Extras contributed 10. To save you the maths, 8 batsmen contributed 19 runs!

A very sad end to our unbeaten run this was but ……… there is always next week and, hopefully, redemption!