11/8/07 - 2nd XI V Bourton Vale 2

Scotty returned for a reprise of past glories, we exchanged a father and son pairing for a pair of brothers and Andy was back on furlough. With the encouragement of a Spanish kiss in the car park, the side took the field on another blazing afternoon.

After his debut fivefor, Ed was clearly in for a long spell and he started from the tennis court end. Rowley, playing well forward to everything, proved up to it. At the other end Lewis played seeing exactly how closely he could pass the bat without actually getting an edge until he finally plucked out off stump.

In a Brearleyesque piece of captaincy a short extra was posted for Rowley who, until that moment, had played entirely correctly. In truth, he did then play a series of false shots. Finally he went back when he should have been forward to give Ed an lbw.

George replaced Lewis but Bourton’s number four, looking entirely at ease, started striking the ball over the boundary with some regularity. He chose a text book forward defensive to George and stood transfixed as the ball trickled back to, and nestled up against, off stump. After an appreciable pause, the bail decided to fall.

It was the end of Bourton resistance. Andy took three catches so easy that he had time to consider dropping all of them. Scotty took a blinder, two handed above his head at slip and the falling Steve also got in on the ‘we’re going to catch ‘em all today’ (well, all except one) act.

George’s 4-15 had done the demolition but Ed’s 2-42 off 15 unchanged overs in the heat of the afternoon had been a main contributor. We were set to chase down 101.

We reached the end of an eventful first over at 11-2. Wides and no-balls had been the main scorers but, in between them, Tim played an imaginative, airy drive and lost his pegs and Scotty, showing unaccustomed rashness so early in the innings, pulled one that was too far up to him and skied it.

Where one Holton opens the bowling, the other opens the batting. That is how you tell the difference between them. James watched these disasters and determined to play anchor man. If the caught and bowled that he offered as his only chance had been accepted, we could well have been eating August Crumble yet again. But it went down. We lost Benny, after some good work with several fours, on the stroke of tea.

After tea James continued to spice his resistance with some delightful straight and extra cover drives and Aviral hit one mighty six before losing his bails to a stroke so awful that it would sully this prose to describe it. This brought the Gibraltarian to the crease. As may be the custom in those parts, he played all of his first twelve balls with his pads but then did remember what his bat is for. A couple of trade-mark Brownian boundaries hastened us to a well deserved 30 points in which James’s determined and excellent 41* had been decisive.