So, 14 games in, still awaiting the First win and the 1s travelled to the wonderful island on Canvey who sit third place. Captain Cooper gave a 1s debut to 2s form man Harry Banyard and there was a welcome return from holiday for Ollie Cheeseman who'd mellowed out since his last time in a GTCC shirt.
On arrival at Smallgains (no, not Pooky's gym returns), we experienced the Great British Summer with a huge gale blowing from behind the bowlers arm - the breeze was so strong that after 1 ball of the innings the umpires decided to play the match without the bails (which were refusing to remain on the stumps). The thinking amongst the brains trust was to bat first, so true to form Harry lost the toss and we were asked to field. George lost a fight with Big Time to bowl up the hill into the wind, but both bowlers kept it extremely tight at the start giving very little away albeit without taking a wicket. Baron was given a break to introduce Cheesey and he continued the trend of bowling tightly without reward (although Danny Allen did take a great catch down the legside off the glove that no-one really appealled for and was therefore given not out). Lumpy came on with the breeze and started to make the ball talk against the Canvey batsmen dismissing the left handed opener thanks to a brilliant (ask anyone else and they'll say average) diving catch low to his right in the gully. The dangerous Casson brother came in at three and Lumpy sent him back to the sheds early on with an edge through to Danny Allen. With Joe Davis bowling tightly from the other end we began to take wickets at more regular intervals all the while stifling the run-rate in difficult batting conditions. In the end Canvey closed on 170-9 with 4 from Lumpy, 3 from Cheese, 1 each for Joe Davis and George Baron.
Teas were good - an excellent selection of delicious sandwiches, and a hot selection of chicken bites and sausage roles for the savouries. However the deserts were unfortunately all store brought - which is fine don't get me wrong - but after the wonderful start to tea the deserts put a downer on it for me. 6.5/10.
So, we began our chasing knowing we needed 10 more than our highest total this year in windy conditions against one of the better performing bowling attacks in the league. Once Muttly had skied one to point and Pooky skied one to cover we were 2 down for not very many and you wouldn't have been surprised to see another famous Totham collapse. However Captain Cooper had given the opening responsibility to Joe Davis this week, and moved himself to four. And this pair built an excellent partnership until the 25th over, both absorbing pressure while batting at the required rate. Harry inevitably missed another straight one to bring Liam to the crease and he continued his excellent game furthering Tothams chase and it began to look more and more like we would get our first win of the season. With about 30 runs needed, Joe fell for an excellent 49 (from what seemed like 1000 balls) - Harry Banyard hit his first ever 1s ball for four before looping his second ball to point to be out caught. We were assisted by 5 penalty runs from the keepers discarded gloves but the target ticked away and eventually victory was sealed by Liam pumping one through the gap for four with 5 overs spare!
Perhaps this is just a glimmer of what could have been if we had played to our potential earlier on in the season. We certainly now want to look to end this season unbeaten to give us 4 wins overall and a much more respectable finishing points tally for the season. While we can still theoretically stay up - the points required are such that realistically this is unlikely. But we won't let this get us down too much, we've got that win now. We look for the second home to Aythorpe next week.
