Charlton Down Second’s v Puddletown – 16 over match
Puddletown 107-4, Charlton Down 98-4
A visit to Puddletown conjures up certain things, long grassy outfield, noise from the A35 and usually a pretty naff pitch that doesn’t bounce. Well the pitch at least had improved, the grass had grown relations and hitting the ball along the ground, as so many of our class players prefer to do, frankly gets you nowhere fast.
Swampy’s heroes arrived, changed and even practiced, before he lost the toss and the fielding bit started. Well I say fielding, frankly this display owed less to that well known cricket description and more to a Stuart Hall gaffawing round of It’s a Knockout, featuring blindfolds, massive clown suits and a three legged race.
Smoother started ok before tailing off with some inconsistent bowling causing a few runs to flow, Matt Lovell also started well before sticking in a few wides, but the score still was acceptable at 30 odd from 7 overs. Tony Jacobs came on and bowled exceptional line and length before two new batsmen took to the crease and to Tony, they swiped and slogged across straight deliveries, mostly missing out the aforementioned grass, and boundaries were flowing. Jacobs eventually lulled a batsman out of his crease and the stand-in wicketkeeper did the rest. It was to be this spell of unorthodox, and some would say ugly, but ultimately effective batting, that made the difference in this match. We seemed to struggle to chase, stop and catch the ball, a major inconvenience in these situations. One batsmen hit the ball straight up in the air early doors and the wicket keeper stared round looking for it only to see the ball land 10 feet away with a flailing Merv making a brave effort to catch it.
On the positive side Merv did show us why he was so effective at times last year with a good spell to hold the score back towards the end, producing a fiendish quicker delivery to clean bowl the best slogger in the Puddletown team. Rudo continued to show his improvement this year with some accurate ‘death’ bowling and the target of ‘116 or 113 or..well I’m not really sure guvnor’ was finally set at 107.
In response Doylie and Gregster set off steadily scoring at around 4-5 an over, without really ever getting on top of the bowling. The partnership of about 43 laid a good base before Greg was out for around 18. The run rate steadily rose to 7, 8 and 9 an over. German Jonny cracked a few before being caught trying to increase the run rate and Merv came in and immediately hit two well timed slogs for 4 before being caught out from the best one by the only bloke likely to catch it. Despite these rescue attempts and Swampy and Doylie’s sterling running between the wickets the visitors ended 9 runs short in a case of ‘what might have been’. It was a fine effort despite this, although the consensus was our fielding had let us down and there is much to work on.
Your Cricket Correspondant