Concorde v Thames Valley Ramblers

Match Report

What a relief to finally get the season underway and to be given a reasonably warm if not especially sunny day.

We were delighted to welcome back Dean Holder for a one off appearance and also welcomed debutants in the form of Steph Franklin of Harpesden and George Reid, a schoolboy from Epsom College.

We lost the toss and elected to bat and the innings was opened by Ed Fernandes and James Aston. Against some decent medium pace, progress was solid with both batsmen despatching the odd bad ball to the boundary and it was something of a surprise when Edgar lofted one to deep mid on. It was even more surprising when the fielder took the catch whilst averting his eyes! Matt Jarrett and James combined solidly for a while but once James was dismissed for 24, the innings went into terminal decline.

Proceedings were enlivened for a while as some hard hitting from Steph breathed life into the innings and a competitive total in the region of 160 looked possible but Steph’s dismissal, caught at square leg off a top edge for 42, brought any such hopes to an end and the innings subsided to 121 all out although modest entertainment was provided by 3 increasingly bizarre run outs, the last of which completed the innings on an appropriate level of farce.

Our bowling was opened by Steph and Matt Jarret who in different ways, fully tested the batsmen. Steph at high pace was a handful and not one that the batmen initially looked too keen on. Indeed, there should have been a wicket in his first over had a simple chance not been grassed. Matt passed the bat time and again at a brisk medium pace and a wicket never looked far away. However, the batsmen to their credit, dug in and whilst never looking totally in control, began to make headway.

Matt did eventually pick up the wicket of one of the openers with an LBW decision and with the entry of Cudders and Matt Cliff, the scoring rate was never much above 2 an over. Matt in particular bowled a miserly spell and was never collared by the batsmen whilst picking up the only other two wickets to fall. Edgar too bowled an exceptional spell with very few loose balls and young George, in a 2 over spell at the end of the innings, showed that he could do a job but despite an excellent all round bowling performance, we never had enough runs to put the batting side under real pressure and they reached there target with 7 wickets remaining.

A rather dispiriting start to the season but when all is said and done, just good to be out playing on a Sendholme ground that looks splendid as ever following a winter of hard work by Mick Reeve.