Concorde v Bank of England

Match Report

Bank of England are a big club and can always be relied upon to turn up with a strong team. It was comforting, therefore, to have what looked like a competitive team ourselves when we turned up at the ground. What was puzzling, however, was to find , despite the presence of world class moveable covers, that the wicket was extremely wet. So wet, in fact, that the BOE Captain, who had already declared his intention to bat first, took one look at the wicket and inserted us. Never has it been more the case, that the match turned upon the toss of the coin!

Edgar and James Aston opened our innings and after a quiet first over when it was quickly established that the ball was unlikely to rise above ankle height, Jimmy drove two generous full tosses down the ground for 4 to get our innings moving. That however was to be his final contribution as he then played all round a straight on to be bowled for 9. No matter, the sight of Ashley walking to the wicket is always comforting but he completely misjudged the pace of the wicket when trying play towards mid wicket and edged a skier to slip for a duck.

The situation went further downhill when our other banker, Nick Freeman, was bowled by a big off cutter and at 15-3, it was left to Edgar and Justin to try and repair the damage. This they did quite successfully for about 40 minutes taking the score to 50 but finding it very difficult to score on such a slow wicket made all the more so by the tactics of the opposition in cleverly taking advantage of the situation by bowling their slowest bowlers and forcing the batsmen to try and create pace themselves. After making 16, Justin was bowled and Jerry Wright joined the heroically patient Edgar who was playing a valiant innings based upon sterling defence while putting away the occasional short ball with great efficiency.

Jerry attempted to take the pitch out of the equation by swinging hard and going over the top but so unresponsive was the wicket that he only succeeded in providing catching practice for the BOE fielders who having spurned the first two chances, gratefully accepted the third. Edgar, having made 46, eventually succumbed in the same manner and the innings subsided to a paltry 95.

Although the pitch was now showing signs of drying out after three hours of sunshine and consequently becoming easier to bat on, we still felt that an early inroad would give us a fighting chance. However, 3 overs each from the young guns, Marcus and Ben, (combined ages 30) made it obvious that medium pace was unlikely to do the trick and with the score having raced to 35, the opposite end of the spectrum was employed with Ian & Jerry (combined ages 133) taking over. This brought some fairly swift results with Jerry bowling the more dangerous of the two openers and then getting an LBW decision against the other and with Ian having the hard hitting no 3 well caught by James at Long off, 45 – 3 looked a lot better. However, although these two kept the scoring rate very low and a catch went down at cover which might have changed the game, no further wickets could be found and so Ed was introduced to the attack.

I know that Ed will not mind me saying that this was a calculated gamble since Ed, on a bad day can go for runs and with a small total to be defended it was a risk. However, on a good day, Ed can very quickly bowl a side out and after settling immediately on a length, this looked like being a good day. Indeed, one that turned sharply induced a caught and bowled, another a slice to point where Ian took the catch and then another that turned took the edge and Nick Freeman behind the stumps took a sharp catch. At 85 – 6 we still believed but 95 was never going to be enough and some excellent batting by the opposition skipper guided BOE home by 4 wickets.

Edgar finished with 3-13 off his 6 overs and with his top scoring 45 was by some distance the man of the match.