A Tale of Two Weather Reports
Winton Dev Team V Ferndown 4s
I have already started getting annoyed by having to type out ‘Winton Dev Team’ so for the purposes of this blog at least I am going to nickname the team ‘The Kapils’, which is easier to type and gives a nod to one of my favourite cricketers of the 80s.
I saw two weather reports for Saturday. The BBC was saying to it would probably be a wet day all the way through, the Met was saying there may be some early showers before clearing. As it turns out, both were wrong. The morning had very light showers followed by a dry warm day, so game on.
Dolman's Farm. A pleasant place to play cricket
Looking at the pitch, it was green and so soft I could push my thumb into it; describing the probable bounce as ‘low’ would be a massive overstatement. It was screaming ‘bowl first’ louder that any pitch I have ever seen, (including the one last week, as it was even softer). We promptly lost the toss and got put into bat.
My wicket was the first to fall, in a fairly unbelievable way. The ball pitched so far outside leg I ignored it as there was no way I could reach it and it would be called a wide. So when I heard leather hit wood and look round to see the bails of I was somewhat surprised (I may have said a rude word….). Coming off team mates asked me if it had moved loads, with my honest answer being ‘it must have, as it pitched so wide I stopped watching’. An opposition player described it to me as ‘the ball of the century’. Doesn’t make it any less annoying mind…….
After I was out the game quickly got out of hand, wickets tumbling so the score was 6 for 4 followed by 15 for 5. The bowler doing the damage – John Dalton, was a style of bowler that our youngsters that made up most of the top order would not have faced before. Slow and loopy, letting the pitch and conditions do the work; he kept putting it on the right place against them. Misjudging their shots, they got through them far too early, chipping up easy catches. This left the score at ‘oh for fa sake’ levels, with me starting to make plans for what to do with the rest of my day.
Not quite the whimsy of a tree inside the boundary,
but interesting visuals never the less
We then put on a bit of a fight back though, with a 70 run stand for the sixth wicket. Alex played a good supporting role but Pranav carried the load. He was not originally in the team but we had a player drop out. He usually plays in the Winton Dorset team but they had too many, so he came and played for us. He usually plays at a higher level, so this series of events was very fortuitous.
One oddity that was thrown up though was the bowler he scored most of his runs against. Watching the game, Giles Woodcraft I would rate as objectively the ‘best’ bowler in the Ferndown team; a good accurate offy bowling the ball through at a good pace. The other bowlers, Pranav found it harder to time. I think Giles’s bowling though, was more at a standard that he was used to seeing so he found it easier to line up and he went after him, Giles going for over 5 runs an over in a low scoring game. Cricket can be very odd sometimes. Giles did stick with it though and eventually claimed Pranav’s wicket.
After Pranav went, the game swung back with the Kapils being all out for 115 in the 33rd over. On the plus side, when we were at 6 for 4 getting to over 100 seemed like a fantasy so it represents a good recovery, it also meant that there was a total to defend. On the down side, it was a very low total to bowl to and the pitch had been drying out. Happily for us though, it was a warm rather than a sunny day so the pitch had not completely dried, the conditions for Ferndown batting therefore I think could be described as ‘easier’, but certainly not ‘easy’.
The Ferndown innings started of hopefully for us, as the openers looked like they were finding it difficult. But a wicket did not fall. A dolly of a catch was put down, they played and missed without the edge being found time after time and they got to over 20 without losing a wicket. I was fearful that they would start to get comfortable and start scoring regularly. However, the bowling continued to be testing with a helpful pitch and slowly the wickets started to fall. Everyone of the Kapils bowling unit kept it tight, making runs hard to come by. At the start of the innings Ferndown needed less than 3 an over but this crept up over the course of the innings. It was a tight game all the way through though, as only a couple of loose over that got hit could swing the game decisively towards Ferndown. The bowlers stayed focused though and as each batsman looked to push the scoring on against the good bowling and helpful conditions they instead got out. The innings finishing all out for 86 in the 38th over for what, at tea, seemed like an unlikely win for Winton.
Looking at performances, Pranav Antony’s 67 was the difference maker in game, with no one else on either team getting close. Bowling wise, everyone who bowled for the Kapils were on it and played their part. The pick of the bowlers would be Alex Tekeli, a medium pacer who bowled an accurate, nagging line daring the opposition to try and hit him. He got his fivfer with figures of 6.3/2/9/5 A very impressive performance. I would also say it was an immense performance from the whole team in the field, with everyone throwing themselves around in the ring to cut of balls and chasing them down to the boundary when needed. In amateur cricket fielding can be overlooked. In this game though, committed fielding probably saved 20 plus runs, probably making a material difference to the result. Special mentioned to Attila Tekeli, the wicket keeper. The uncertain bounce made it difficult to sometimes judge taking the ball. He took one on the side of the foot from our fastest bowler, which probably bruised nicely. Another ball, which kept lower than expected, looked like it was going for byes until, luckily, he managed to get his gonads in the way. Commitment above and beyond there…….
For Ferndown, John Dalton finished with the highly impressive figures of 4/2/3/4, with Giles Woodcraft also taking three wickets. Their batting never really got going with a few making it into the teens without anyone pushing on.
So, the Kapils are up and running with their first win. A long way to go to see how this season pans out though.
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