On a Minefield

Another double-header weekend for me ... with a 4ths game on Saturday and a 3rds away (faaar away) game on Sunday. I also had a hectic bit of socialising to do around this, so as you can imagine I'm a wee bit knackered today :)

Anyway, on Saturday we won the toss and batted first (which is the standard response of course) and were all out in the penultimate over for 131 (40 over game). Again, this isn't generally a sufficient total in 40 overs, but we have some good bowlers this year and I for one had faith ;)

For my own batting - another duck :( but at least it was a new mode of dismissal with a caught behind rather than bowled. I was facing a spinner with a wierd action, and playing at balls well outside the off stump. It was only afterwards that it occurred to me that he wasn't turning the bloody thing at all and I could have been leaving them all - or whacking them. Ah well, live and learn.

For their innings I was fielding at backward square leg and gully and pulled off some good stops, one of which led to us running out their opener who was going well. After that we got wickets fairly regularly to keep the game under control. I came on just before drinks and took a wicket with my first ball :D Again, it did nothing - just straight at the stumps on a length. The batsman just played way too early and tried to slog it because it was so slow :)

I got to bowl my 10 overs straight through which was a first for me, ending up with 10-2-26-3 (O-M-R-W). I had a chance for another few, with a good LBW turned down; a tough C+B that I just got a fingertip to; a catch from the number 11 put down and a slower (than usual) ball getting through and just over off stump. Another good thing was that I was seaming the ball into the stumps regularly - meaning that they couldn't afford to leave anything close outside off. As my pace picks up I think this will give me a chance of slip catches.

So we won well, bowling them out for 87. Obviously I was well happy with my 3 wickets and a good economy.

On Sunday then, we had a game about 80km away from home - which meant getting up early(ish) after being out fairly late the night before. As it turned out, the captain had over-estimated the traffic, and we were there an hour early :(

As the game went, I didn't get to bat or bowl - but I didn't mind too much as I was fielding in the covers and so was involved in the game a lot more than last week. We were fielding first having lost the toss - and the game seemed to be getting out of our grasp a few times with them having a few big hitters sticking at the crease and whacking boundaries through the leg side. To be fair, our bowlers put too many on leg - which gave them the freedom to do this. But in the end, we managed to restrict them to just 139 in the 40 overs. I was happy with my fielding again, with one catch and numerous stops - which were made difficult by the state of the outfield which was literally a rugby pitch :o One of our guys was fielding on the boundary behind square leg and on two occasions misjuged a ball that passed him for 4. One of these was all along the ground - so he got into a textbook long barrier - only for the ball to suddenly jump about a metre in the air, right over his head and out for 4!! It looked like it had hit a landmine or something!

We knocked off the runs for the loss of 2 wickets - with one of our openers getting his 53 not out in the last over. We're a club that normally chase totals badly - so it made a nice change to get this so easily. Although their bowling was pretty bad, with ~30 extras and far too much slow bowling that just sat up outside off waiting to be hit. It says a lot that both their wickets were caught in the deep.

So a good weekend for our 3rd and 4th teams, but unfortunately both our 1sts and 2nds were beaten in their games.