| Strollers beat Limers by 39 runs |
| scorecard | |
Another Flaming hot (16 degrees...) Summer’s day was presented to Strollers and their opposition, The Limers, though once everyone had gathered for the start, it looked more like a parade from Dad’s Army than a collection of finely honed athletes waiting to do battle with bat and ball. |
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| When Roops of Ruislip manor fame showed up with his whites, second hand Merc and dark glasses, Strollers rubbed their hands with joy at the thought of another easy win. But it wasn’t to prove so easy after all! | |
| Strollers batted first on an interesting pitch somewhere near to Kew Bridge (sorry, but Pitch D is a tad far to walk). Roops, rolling back the years, came charging in at pace and sent down some wicked swinging deliveries at the Virk Bros, opening for Strollers. This was matched at the other end with an excellent seaming, hostile spell by Greenford’s resident South African quickie, which I have to say, included possibly the best ball I have ever seen bowled at this level, though it failed to dislodge Virk Jit has to be said! | |
Virk H departed to a vicious swinging full toss, the trigger finger of Matthews Snr as umpire, seeming to be up before the ball left the bowler’s hand, but in truth, that’s only because with his arthritis, it can’t move any quicker! |
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| Runs seemed to flow, but only after a couple of wickets did the Strollers innings really take shape, Krunic and Moody setting about the Chelsea pensioners' (and a few carers') bowling with aplomb. Both steadily took the partnership to a near record 111 until Krunic, finding himself close to fifty yet again, realised a jug was the penalty for being greedy whilst batting and duly got himself out, leaving Matthews Snr to join Moody at the wicket. | |
| Both kept up the tempo, scoring at well above 7 an over until Moody too felt the jug calling and decided to get himself out, finding then to his horror that his O Levels weren’t at maths and he had miscounted by some way, dismissed for a not too shabby 76! | |
| Matthews Snr and Patel continued the party, taking the Strollers score to 251 through a combination of running ones direct to the Wickie, Cover Point and Umpire and also ducking the odd straight one so it flew past the Wickie for four byes. | |
| Matthews Snr finished 40no and Patel a not insignificant 17, so was this a total too far for Limers? | |
| True enough 251 was a fine total but Virk H and Patel J were not at their best and runs flowed reasonably well until Patel remembered that he couldn’t bowl a jaffa every week and got a wicket off a straight one. | |
| Wickets came from time to time, but Limers kept the scoring rate up, thanks to Dibbly Dobbly Krunic going for shed loads an over and Matthews Snr managing only 3 over s until rigamortis set in. | |
| In truth, the Limers innings was always up against it and eventually, despite Krunic’s best efforts to achieve the worst ever Strollers figures, they succumbed to the inevitable, but not before they had made a game effort to chase down the total. Only when Krunic realised his figures were challenging the Strollers worst record (by the Bay City Rollers I think), did he bend his back to deliver some quickies (ooer) and bring on his ace card Matthews Jnr for the last over to really sew the game up. | |
| The innings was best remembered for some outstanding fielding by Bojanic who having been stolen by the renegade Ginger Whinger to play football on the pitch next door, come back to make some astonishing catches on the boundary at full length, whilst proceeding to drop the easiest catch of the day which came straight at him. | |
| A good day was had by all, made all the more pleasurable by Limers’ honest intent to try and chase down a good total, which is much to their credit. Good humour was had all round and at the end of the day, Strollers won by 39 runs. | |
| M.O.M was Moody, still trying to reconcile the numbers from the score book whilst stood in the shower! | |
| Report: Matthews Snr | |
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