Charlton Down Cricket Club
Charlton Down versus Plush versus Portsmouth touring team
Sunday 24 May 2009
Shed’s Fixture Calamity creates Perfect Sunday Cricketfest
A week off from league cricket and a stunning sunny Sunday. What more could we want. Well as of last Tuesday we were in want of an opposition due to a mild scheduling hiccup from shed. Sid sent him packing off in search of another opposition and boy did he manage that. After a bit of ringing around a fixture was made against a Portsmouth touring Pub team. All was set fair, so it seemed. Unfortunately due to traffic the team were running a little late but to everyone’s surprise, especially Shed the fixture secretary, another team entirely arrived. Plush had the date in the diary from a long time back. So 1 cricket pitch and 3 cricket teams. Mild dilemma. A few heads knocked together and a 3-way tournament was invented. Portsmouth arrived and took to the field in the first match against plush. 20 overs a piece. Porstmouth set a solid total of 106. Plush in reply managed to get to the total with about 3 overs to spare.
After a couple of hours sitting in the sun/shade Charlton Down took to the field V’s the touring Portsmouth side. With some fantastic bowling the 5 CD bowlers toiled in the heat. Rich B, Jesus and 14 year old Crispin Brown on Debut all took 1 wicket, JP picked up 2-6 and CCD 3-18 to restrict the visitors to just 78.In response CD started poorly, with Lingham, Coates-Dale, Joy, Fenwick and Bradshaw all falling cheaply to leave the score at 27-5. Matt Hillman looked good before falling for 9 . Skip was now in the middle with Crispin Brown and some sense of stability was restored. Crispin hit a few great shots before falling for 12 . Sid and Jesus managed to carry CD over the line finishing Not out for 24 and 10 respectively.
So it was a winner take all 10 over shoot out between The hosts and Plush. CD batted first and the 2 Non batsman from game 1 opened. Rich Burdett started swishing from the off. JP and Jesus came and went for 0. Before Lingham (Special mention to the forward defensive shot in ball 1) and Burdett put on a rapid 32 before lingham succumbed for 21. Joy was next up and raised his fist in joy after his first run (2 golden ducks in a row explained that) and went on to a quick fire 8 n/o after Burdett was well run out for a great 28. CCD also helped the average with a quick 4 n/o. So after 10 overs CD had put up a great target of 73. The plush batsman started strongly but with the good CD bowling found boundaries hard to come by. With the top order tiring Brown picked up an important wicket and Burdett managed 2 Run outs off his own bowling with the plush batsman pushing hard. The game was close all the way through and it was left to Coated Dale for the final over with plush needing 9 to win. Much discussion between bowler and skip and the scene was set. After a tactical decision by CCD a 4 arrived off the 1st ball. Then dot wicket dot wicket and a single off the last gave CD the match and overall victory.
And so the day, which started off full of uncertainty, ended with a fantastic day being had by all. 3 teams and the many spectators had a great time and hopefully the beginning of a traditional annual event may have begun.
Shed may have made an error but it turned out great and he is going to organise a better error next year. Special Mention to Jackie and Collette as well as Becky and Eleanor who all helped out with extra food drinks bar serving and tidying all day.
I think all involved decided that Sunday was what cricket was made for.