Charlton Down Cricket Club

Charlton Down suffer early wobble before securing good victory

After a Saturday of constant rain the skies cleared and despite the cloudy and blustery conditions the home side were looking to continue their excellent recent form. Sid the Skip won the toss and decided to put the 8 man Pokesdown team into the field in an attempt to build a healthy 1^st innings lead.

Sid the Skip's plan seemed sound but with some tidy bowling the visitors kept the run rate low . Despite some gritty batting the Charlton Down upper order failed to fire. None of Bradshaw(8), Homewood(12), Joy(2), Dunford(5), Lingham(8) and Gollidge(2) could ever get going and this left the Home team floundering on 43-6 .

Enter Holcroft and Cossens who put on 63 and injected some much needed pace into the innings, before Cossens  fell, failing to reach the famous Lingham Cow Corner boundary and being impressively caught in the deep. At 106 –7 Chris Towndrow joined Holcroft in the middle for his first Sunday league knock of the season. This pair watched the score tick over and with it the batting points started to mount up. As the 5^th and final batting point was secured Holcroft went on a 1 man mission to be caught out as many times as possible in single innings, managing to be dropped 5 times. During this time he accumulated a classy 73 before eventually being bowled. The pair had put on a vital 93. Dave Saxby held his nerve for the 1 ball he had to face getting to 1 n/o and at the other end Towndrow had played an intelligent innings looking assured and in control once his eye was in and assisting the team with a possibly crucial 31 n/o.

With Omniwag masterminding a fantastic tea the Charlton Down bowlers concentrated on a possible repeat of  the 36 all out that the team had achieved in the last meeting. Lingham seemed to be confused and was seen warming up for a quite strenuous ballet class prior to the innings.

Homewood and Towndrow started the attack and soon the wickets started to fall. Homewood bagged the away captain after a tidy catch by Lingham (The warm up seemed to have worked), Towndrow (5-24-1) took a great C&B. Homewood (8-11-3) took 2 more wickets with good catches from Cossens and Lingham again. Fagence and Saxby took over the bowling duties. Saxby(3-7-1)showed a good mix of pace and length before Homewood snaffled a good catch . Fagence (5.1-8-2) looked tidy from the off and managed to bowl the 2 remaining batsman. With only 8 players the home team had taken the required 7 wickets for just 57 runs. In the process Homewood had leapt to the top of the bowlers chart now leading Cossens and Afzal by 2 wickets with just 2 games to go.

So just Ibberton and Broadstone left to face and another max points score,  Sid the Skip is confident of promotion to Div 5. Let's keep up the concentration .