Monday 25 July 2011

23/07/2011 - Bourne, Surrey



Another game, another loss. My second team is absolutely terrible - indeed, they're famous for being terrible - but this season has been worse than usual. We played on an ok green-top. The odd ball scuttled through very low, but otherwise it was even. There was plenty of grip for the spinners due to the dry soil peeking through the grass.

Batting first, we made 196. It wasn't a bad effort, but the opposition bowled most of their colts and plenty of joke bowlers, so 220-30 would have been more like it. We missed out on too many singles. I scored 22* at the end - again, I'm not timing it when I hit out as well as I should, but it wasn't easy with some extremely slow bowlers and the fielders out on the boundary. And a nearby bonfire being lit just as I went out to bat, leaving me trying to sight the ball out of a smokescreen. A loopy donkey drop plopped onto my toe at one point, and I was surprised to feel pain shooting across my foot. Now my toenail has turned black. Turns out even really slow cricket balls hurt.

So we were pretty confident, but less so when they got to 60-0 in reply, at 7 an over. As one of the opening bowlers I feel I should take some responsibility for this. So, excuses:

- They opened with a combination of good adult and small child, so I had to shorten my run up every other ball which really buggered up my rhythm.
- We had a really terrible wicket keeper which I found off putting.
- Nearly half the runs came off me in misfields. We are absolutely terrible in the field.
- We had a really old and worn ball, which meant I had to bowl cutters. Some of them gripped and went miles, too far for the batsman to nick. But I had less control over them than if I'd been sending it seam up.

Facts:

- I bowled like shit.

We managed to work our way through their order, and I came back with 6 overs to go. We had one of those horrible situations - 5 wickets left, about 30 or so for them to win, with a draw another possibility. We had to try to win it. I figured the best way to do it was to bowl floaty spin and get them playing their shots. Which it did. And it got me two wickets. The trouble was, I also went for a few, and so did the guy at the other end. We were left needing three wickets, and them needing 12 to win off the last two. Suddenly, somehow, they'd ended up favourites. My over went for six in byes and whatnot, and they won in the last one.

We'd gambled; we'd lost. If I'd bowled seam up I think the draw would have been the most likely result, but we were desperate to win, and gave runs away in our efforts to do so.  There were plenty more culpable players - catches went down, the captaincy was questionable and misfields occurred left right and centre - but at the same time I felt pretty crushed. I guess if I'm right to feel down about my performance it needs to be the bowling in my first spell, not the second. We just don't know how to win.

The difference between my two teams is enormous. In terms of talent there's not such a massive difference - a few class players apart - but in all the minutiae of quick singles, tight fielding and tactics there's a gulf of epic proportions. When I was batting at the non-striker's end it got whacked to long leg, and thinking it was a certain four we stopped running, missing out on at least two and maybe three runs. That would probably have got us the draw. Cricket is a game of minutiae.

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