Charlton Down Cricket Club

Charlton Down versus Cheselbourne

Sunday 5 July 09

Cheselbourne chase down Charlton Downs Challenge

After the high of beating Bournemouth and the bump back down to earth the previous week’s loss to Parley, game 9 started the reverse fixtures and took us to Cheselbourne. The sky was patchy but not too cool. At 4 mins to the scheduled start Snail arrived (not unusual) but was reprieved by the home captain only making it there 1 min earlier. The toss was made and Sid lost, however, as tends to be the way CD were put into bat. Snail quickly got ready (well as quickly as he manages anything) and joined Mark Fenwick to start the innings. After a slow start the score began to move and made it to 35 before Snail was on his way back in for 16. ( 16 more than last weeks golden duck although he had been dropped 3 times in this weeks innings , twice when on 0 again) Rickard and Fenwick quickly followed for 4 and 19 respectively. Sid and Doylie put on 25 before Sid went for 9. A special note for the skip here as both bat and gloves were heaved over the clubhouse in a big girly stop not seen for many a while due to being angry at himself…..again. Homewood (2) went quickly and this left the score on 85 for 5 after 30 overs. Things were looking bleak but then came 2 fantastic innings by Ian Doyle and Rich Burdett. With a mild accelaration Doylie passed 50, his first for the club before getting being caught for 66. Burdett and Chas Duerdoth (7), on debut, scored a fantastic 45 off of the remaining 4 overs Burdett being the main aggressor for a brilliant unbeaten 36. The score was 191 and skip was well chuffed as it never looked like being that high so a great finish.

From the off the CD bowlers kept things very tight, Duerdoth, Afazl and Homewood kept the score to 41 for 3 off the first 15 overs, Homewood taking all 3 wickets. Lowther picked up a wicket in his first over to leave Cheselbourne on 46-4 off 16. With the game there for the taking CD could press home their advantage. Skip was trying many bowlers to make the breakthrough but none of Lowther, Adcock, Burdett, Coates-Dale or the returning Homewood and Afzal could grab that all important wicket. In fairness to all the bowlers conditions were not great with a very strong wind making things very hard and also the batsmen playing very sensibly they put on 147 to pass the line with 4.3 overs remaining.     

Well played to all involved, a good effort but in the end we fell a little short. Previously against this team we got all the breaks and on Sunday we didn’t, catches seemed to be just out of reach etc. However, we are still not helping ourselves in the field with a few too many simple errors adding to the home teams score. All in all, there is plenty to gain from the performance but plenty to work on too.             

Next up is Puddletown who beat us soundly last time. Hmmmm Revenge sounds good to me