Surrey Championship Division 4 – 2nd XI competition
Woking & Horsell 2nd XI 213 for 6 (51 overs)
Stoke D’Abernon 2nd XI 126 for 7 (39.4 overs)
Winning Draw to Woking & Horsell 2nd XI
Stoke hosted Woking & Horsell on Saturday in what promised to be one of the toughest games of the season – Woking having won all of their first 5 games.
Crispy won the toss and elected to field. Big Bird and Jake took the new ball again, and it was Big Bird who got the early breakthrough when French played on for 7. Jake’s bowling saw a big improvement from the week before, but he was unable to find a breakthrough himself.
After Worgan attacked Big Bird’s bowling, Jonny was brought on and bowled a long economical spell. Po came on and Worgan took one sighter before aiming a heave at long on only to see the ball caught comfortably by Jonny at slip. White looked a class batsman from the word go with a high backlift and good timing. He compiled 42 before falling in the first over after tea to a shot that looked destined for the boundary before Jake plucked it out of the air with his right hand. A splendid catch!
The next partnership was slow to get going, with Jonny in particular proving hard to work around for runs. He seemed a lot more confident since his 5 wicket haul last week and found a good rhythm. He got reward when Williams was trapped leg before for 27.
This brought Zeeshan to the crease who seemed to be under instruction to up the run rate. When Po finished his spell, Zeeshan had a go at Duncan’s bowling, hitting 16 off 1 over before getting a leading edge which Duncan was relieved to see carry to Jake on the long off boundary. Jake judged the catch well.
Mike bowled a tidy over and Jonny bowled Newton shortly before a positive declaration came at 213-6 from 51 overs. Jonny was the pick of the bowlers with 2-46 in 21 overs, but Po was disappointed his 2 wickets cost 68.
After an excellent tea which I’d started to miss, (having not played a home game in over a month), Stoke set about the task of scoring 214 to win. Unfortunately we never really got going as the visiting bowling attack was very tidy. Chisolm and Haidi bowled excellently early on. Malcolm fell early and it took until the 13th over to get to 2 runs per over.
In this innings it seemed every time we tried to break the shackles of tight bowling a wicket fell. White came on to bowl and Ali fell to a good diving catch at point by Haidi. Tufty hit some pleasing boundaries before being bowled by Guy. Jonny couldn’t quite hit the heights of last week and fell to a sharp slip catch by Williams. Crispy and Duncan came together and Crispy cleared the sight screen once before becoming White’s third victim. Shortly afterwards Duncan was caught and the visitors sensed a victory was on the cards.
Steve and Mike came together and steadied our batting with a sensible partnership of 33. Steve was batting unusually low in the order due to a hand injury incurred in the field, but he looked as solid as ever today.
With the weather closing in Woking brought their openers back. Mike struck three 4s off Haidi before being bowled in his next over. Jake went in to offer support for Steve.
Unfortunately at this point the weather intervened and the drizzle became steady rain and too heavy to play in. Our innings was closed prematurely on 126-7. Would we have held out for a draw? Would Woking have taken our last 3 wickets for another win? We’ll never know.
Next week we host Chipstead, Coulsdon & Walcountians for the first time at 2nd XI level in a league fixture.
Scorecard : http://sdacc.play-cricket.com/scoreboard/scorecard.asp?id=11138719