The dreaded 9pm game was made even worse by the bitterly cold evening & the previous games all being delayed due to ice hockey, so the whole team unkindly hoped that the last man standing in the 8pm game got out when he was enjoying his innings. Whilst waiting, the chat amongst the players revolved around Drew discussing whether to purchase some specialist bowling boots, now that he has found his true role in the team. John met the opposition skipper, who called 'heads' then made the obvious decision & put Gt.Totham into bat.
As they missed out having a bat last week Josh & Drew opened the innings. After one over we were on 20, after 2 overs we were in the 30s & Josh retired on 25 during the 3rd over. Pooky came in & continued the onslaught, retiring quite soon after arriving at the crease. Drew wasn't far behind, retiring too. Nick & John were now in. Charles, umpiring, told John not to slow the run rate, so a very quick innings of 10 followed. Being dismissed caught behind off a ball that was nowhere near the bat was the first Gt.Totham wicket to fall. Cheesey then came in to bat with Nick, who soon retired too. Josh returned & bludgened another superb 51 runs in a very short space of time, with a devastating display of hitting, including many 6s & 4s. He was out, caught behind on 76 (he did hit it), to leave Cheesey not out for an excellent 19. Cheesey would have been out stumped, but, when he was (literally) half way down the track the keeper failed to take off the bails & returned the ball to the bowler. Drew hit the final delivery to take us to 207, which, we were told, was the record indoor score, beating the 205 scored earlier the same day.
John opened the bowling, the first ball beat the batsman, leaving him stranded out of his crease & Nick juggled it before allowing him back in his crease! Then, 3rd ball, Josh's telescopic arms couldn't reach a low catch to add to his dad's dismay. Cheesey's first over was tight apart from the numerous overthrows that Pooky caused by trying to run out the batsmen with no-one available to back up. However, John's 2nd over resulted in 2 stumpings by Nick, one catch by Josh & 2 runs. The opposition were 20-3 off 4 overs. Then Pooky, Drew & Josh bowled, keeping the runs down, apart from when Cheesey returned the favour with overthrows off Pooky's bowling. Nick took 2 catches, one each off Pooky & Drew to finish with 4 victims. Drew bowled the last man out, all out for 31 for a resounding victory.
A brilliant performance by all the team, to leave us 3 wins from 3 games, with games in hand over the 1st & 2nd placed teams. Next week we face top-of-the-table Writtle, which will be a tougher challenge than previous games.
