Concorde v 54th OCA

Match Report

Following a negotiation with 54OCA, Sundays game was rearranged to take place at Home rather than away as scheduled on the basis that it seemed unlikely that we would be able to raise a side. As it turned out, such fears were well founded as we were only just able to raise eleven for the rearranged home game!

Having said that, 54OCA turned up with only 10 and were soon down to 9 when one of their number declared himself unwell on arrival and had to be taken home. For our part, Josh Griffiths had a game in the morning which over ran and on coming off the field, he felt unable to play another game for us so it all worked out rather conveniently with 10 of Concorde taking on 9 of 54OCA.

As it turned out, 9 proved to be perfectly adequate for 54OCA as they batted exceptionally well against some testing pace and seam from Dukie and Ash Weston, some canny spin from George, Edgar and Jerry and a bit of everything from Nigel Wright and young Ben Westen, making his full match debut for Concorde. The Cunningham brothers were, as ever, to the fore in compiling a good score of 197 for 7 as was the opener, Wheeler, who between muttering about Dukie’s pace, made the highest score of the game with some elegant batting in reaching 55.

The Concorde innings never really got going against some well-directed seam bowling with Edgar being bowled for a 41 ball 5 and Prev going in similar fashion for a 27 ball 9. Ashley managed to exert some authority in making 27 and in company with Nick Freeman (11) these two pushed the Concorde score to 59 for 4 before both were out within a few balls of each other.

Jerry Wright and Simon Duke then mounted a short counter attack with Dukie in particular playing some superb shots in making 20 – all of them in boundaries. However, when he was caught behind with the score on 86, the only objective became holding on for the draw which was duly accomplished by the last pair, George and Stockers, who played out 22 balls and 18 balls respectively and finished stoutly undefeated without having scored a run! Truly, a rearguard action of which those two great Concorde stonewallers of the past, Howard Smith and Ian Cudworth would have been proud.