First thing to say, on my return from 2 weeks holiday, is a huge Thank You to Mark Collins for deputising for me and delivering two victories.
So on Saturday the pressure was on to make it three wins in a row. We played away against Oxford & Bletchingdon Nondescripts 3rds at Islip, on easily the worst pitch I’ve seen for many years. We duly lost the toss and were asked to bat by our opponents and thought that a score of 140-150 would be a good total.
We batted steadily reaching 97 from the first 25 overs before accelerating to finish on 201-7 from a rain-reduced allocation of 43 overs. Good scores were achieved by a number of players (Nick Angus 31, Graeme Coates 33, Harry Gillam 42, Freddie Smith 49).
In reply, Nondies never looked like they would be capable of reaching our score, it was just a case of whether we could take 10 wickets. We bowled in five and six over spells taking wickets steadily, aided by some outstanding catches from Nick Angus, Tom Ling, Alex Owen and Harry Gillam. We also had a run-out from a direct hit by Freddie Smith.
Another rain break reduced the overs available to us to just 40. With three overs to go we needed one wicket to win. The Nondies batsmen blocked anything straight and left anything wide. With one over remaining, Sam “Golden Arm” Collins was brought back into the attack. The batsman’s nerves seemed to become more shredded with every ball of the final over…..with two balls in the match left, Sam delivered the perfect line and length and bowled us to victory amid raucous scenes in the mobile Eric Hollies stand (Mark Collins, Nick Owens and Bear!).
A true team performance, with everyone making a telling contribution. Final mention to the bowlers; Rob Owen 2-31, Sam Collins 1-6, Woody Cope 2-13, Callum Place 1-18, Ed Owens 2-26 and Alex Owen 1-17.