Saturday 9th September & Sunday
10th September 2006
Offham v New Ash Green
Saturday 9th September 2006
Friendly Match
- 40 Overs per Side
Offham 179-8 (40 overs)
New Ash Green 107 all out (24.3 overs)
New Ash Green lost by 72 runs.
As so often September produced some of the best cricketing
conditions of the year, which were enjoyed by both sides. Offham,
boasting as many as five first team players, won the toss and chose to bat, but
New Ash Green got off to a great start when John Harley took a wicket in the
first over and Lee Saunders followed up with the prize wicket of Neil Willis in
his first over to leave Offham struggling on 1-2. Tom
Gittings got the scoreboard moving, but when Saunders
came off Blair Wilson also struck in his first over (of the year in his case)
with a ball that moved back a long way to bowl Martyn
England, another dangerman. Not surprisingly he was
unable to maintain his consistency, and a partnership of 72 for the fourth
wicket looked to be taking Offham out of reach before
Pete Burke finally bowled Gittings for 71. The short
boundaries continued to attract any loose bowling, but Burke with 2-35 in 10 overs and Joe Elisak with an
impressive 3-27 in 9 ensured that Offham never truly
ran away with things as they finished with 179-8.
A score of 180 was a tough task for New Ash Green, especially
with none of their leading batsmen, but there were several capable of making a
contribution, and with the artificial wicket playing well and short boundaries
the total was certainly gettable. John Howland and Scott McKechnie
got them away to a good start before Howland was out in the seventh over,
unfortunately followed by Olly Harding first ball. McKechnie and Blair Wilson then put on 46 for the third
wicket to put the game back in the balance,
Old Williamsonians v
New Ash Green
Sunday 10th September 2006
Medway Sunday League
Match - 40 Overs per side
Old Williamsonians
(8 points) 221-5 (40 overs)
New Ash Green (2 points) 108-7 (40 overs)
New Ash Green lost by 113 runs.
For the second year in succession Old
Williamsonians played New Ash Green in their last game of the Sunday League
season with the League title at stake. Having achieved a fairly straightforward
victory in 2005 to take the title things were slightly more complicated for
them this year as they needed a maximum points victory to retain their status.
This meant having 6 players under 21 in the side, scoring 200 runs for a
batting bonus point and taking 8 wickets for a bowling bonus point, as well as
needing to win.
Choosing to bat first to go for the batting
bonus point they came up against John Harley and new recruit Amjad Ali, who bowled with pace and got considerable
movement, though not perhaps enough consistency. Nonetheless he beat the bat a
number of times and took the first wicket when Craig Lambert left a ball and
was embarrassingly bowled as it cut back and took his off stump. Jonathan Child
took the score along well and the scored the bulk of a partnership of 56 for
the second wicket before Richard Dalton completely mistimed one from Harley and
was caught at mid-wicket. Child and Luke Butcher took the score on to 97, with
Child reaching his 50 before going back to one from Olly
Harding and being very plumb LBW as he missed his attempt to turn it into the legside. Harding bowled a good spell to keep the scoring in
check, and Butcher and his captain Simon Wood had to take some risks to keep
the score ticking over fast enough to keep 200 in sight, but thanks to some
sloppy fielding they were able to keep the pace up. They had brought their
requirement down to 30 from the last seven overs when
they fell in quick succession to two good catches by Olly
Harding off Matt Dehaney and the returning Ali, but
after a hesitant start Marc King and Jonathan Wright swung the bat lustily for
the last few overs and comfortably secured the
batting point.
New Ash Green started solidly, with Matthew Quantrill putting away balls outside off stump from Luke
Butcher, but Matt Dehaney couldn’t quite get the ball
over the fielder. Luke Shaw showed no fear against the pace of Butcher, also
calmly guiding him away for 4, but Quantrill, as so
often this season, having looked solid threw his wicket away with a tame shot
to cover from a gentle full toss. Shaw once again showed impressive maturity
for a 13 year old, keeping Ali company in a partnership of 27 for the 3rd
wicket, but eventually he sliced one to gully, and Matt Bushe
failed to last long, though he managed a single before his departure to ensure
Joe Elisak maintained his slender Duck Cup lead. When
Ali was run out shortly afterwards, just failing to regain his ground after a
slight mix up New Ash Green were 60-5 with still 24 overs
remaining, and all hope of victory was gone. At this point Old Williamsonians must have felt that the title was a
formality, and so it should have been, but they betrayed their lack of
experience of non-limited overs cricket. As a young
side it appears that none of them had played ‘proper’ cricket, where you
actually have to get a side out to win, and they clearly had no idea how to
winkle a side out. Their steady medium pace attack was varied only briefly by
the mostly flat spin of their captain Simon Wood, making it impossible for New
Ash Green to get the runs, but also giving no reason whatsoever for their
batsmen to take any risks. Olly Harding and Lee
Saunders put on 26 for the sixth wicket, taking 13 overs
to do it before Saunders was finally caught for 16 from a mistimed pull, a shot
which finally gave Luke Butcher his first wicket against his former net
partners at the last gasp. Toby Hawkins came to the crease with a career total
of 1 run from 4 innings and 11 overs to survive, but
he and Olly Harding stayed together for another 8.3 overs, looking very comfortable defending the seam bowling,
even with an increasingly tight ring of close fielders. Despite the fact that
they could not possibly lose OW’s failed to try
anything different – a few overs of someone tossing
the ball up would almost certainly have encouraged the batsmen to take more
risks than they did against the seamers, but they
could not seem to get it into their limited overs
psyche that they could afford to give a few runs away. Eventually it was the
one spinner bowling, Wood, who did make the breakthrough when Harding’s
marathon innings of 9 (in some 21 overs at the
crease) was ended perhaps a touch unluckily by an LBW
decision. That was the seventh wicket, and left Old Willys
15 balls to take the crucial 8th wicket. Bearing in mind the two
batsmen were Hawkins, with a previous career total of 1 run in 4 games, and the
Duck King Elisak it had to be said that if they could
not get the wicket they would really not deserve to be league champions, but
for all the ring of close fielders and aggressive geeing up of each other they
never looked much like getting the wicket as Hawkins finished with 8* and Elisak 1*, Hawkins safely seeing out the last three balls.
Seldom can a team have left a field looking more glum after a 113 run victory,
but in truth OW’s did not deserve the bonus point as
they had shown a total lack of understanding of how to take wickets, an
important part of the game, the art of which is being steadily eroded by the
prevalence of limited overs cricket. For New Ash
Green despite the heavy defeat there was considerable pride in the effort made
to see out the overs, and in the improved
performances again of some of the fringe players who may have much more to
contribute in future. For OW’s it was a sad trip to
the bar to take a last look at the league trophy that sat on the counter,
before returning it to the league for someone else to collect.
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