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Saturday 1st XI - Match Reports
1st XI vs Tenterden - Saturday 19th June 2010Orpington - 183/9 (50 overs - P.Schmidt 41) Tenterden - 171 all out (46.1 overs - S.Ingram 4/43) Orpington win by 12 runs PABLO's REVIEW OF THE GAME - scroll down for Cricket Spy A home game after last weeks away fixture down the road would see OCC play against the league leaders in Tenterden CC. The tension would have been building from the start as the OCC awaited for the all important Toss which of late Mr Schmidty had been giving away. Well Schmidty made it 2 in a row and unlike last week he decided to bat as there seemed to be lot of enthusiasm from the older contingent. Well OCC started off with a new opening pair of Sterling and the young up and coming George Smith. OCC got a good start with shots being played from the word go from the usual Sterling, but it could have all gone horribly wrong when in the 3rd over he cut a long hop straight to cover and was put down. This seem to spur on the 2 openers and with George not for the first time playing in the 1’s getting used to not scoring freely when the opposition don’t give you a lot to hit. Well OCC had made 41 before Sterling push one to the covers and called for a single bearing in mind he was not moving like a gazelle after his slight injury last week. Poor George was left running to the danger end and was promptly run out when a direct hit left him a foot short. (The moral of this learning curve for young George is if you can’t get in then make sure your not the one run out) This brought the skipper to the wicket as he had pushed/backed himself to go up the order to give the side some stability for the day. Schmidty and Sterling seem quite comfortable with the situation, when Sterling received ( what all us batsman hate to hear...) the Jaffa. At this point Tenterden bowling had clawed themselves right back in the game from a good OCC start. The middle order of Simon, in form Peter, Sam and Robinson then supported Schmidty while trying to get OCC to a respectable score while contending with some fine bowling from Tenterden Mark Baker. When Schmidty fell 9 short of his half century after being in control it looked like the OCC had lost the momentuim. It was then left to the tail end to see us through to the 50 overs and after some fine hitting from Yamma scoring 10 off the last over (missing 4 and then 6 & 4) got OCC to 183. After what was another great OCC tea enjoyed by both teams Tenterden started to get mind on to chase down this total and strengthen their position at the top of the table. With the sun shining and the game underway it took just 3 deliveries from Yamma to remove the opener with a catch behind to Doker. This is the sort of start that OCC were hoping for. We knew then that that would bring Timir Chanda to the wicket and over past contest he has always played his part in scoring runs against us. When Yamma claimed the other opener we were looking good them having them 26-2. A drop of rain came and we went off while this pasted. At the re-start 4 runs on Yamma claimed Chanda and OCC knew this was now going to be a good contest as Tenterden bat all the way down and were now 30-3. OCC knew that they had one more ace up there sleaves in Paul Brann and he seemed to take it all in his stride as he always has against us. When Bradders took his 1st wicket they were reeling at 55-4 At this point another shower of rain came and look like spoiling what was brewing to be at great game if we could complete it before it got Dark. We were lucky that this was only a 30 min delay and was the last. At this point Bradders re-opened his account and took 2 wickets in quick succession and had to wait for his next over to see if he could complete his hat trick. (Something tells me that Bradders had somewhere else to be Sat night). With everyone around the bat the bastman got well forward to a good delivery and it was not to be. They were now 61-6 but still had Paul Brann at the wicket and the next pair seemed to dig in to make a stand of it. OCC were going through the motions a bit and may have thought that they had already won this game and thinking about how many beers they were going to be drinking later that evening. Things were looking stagnated for the OCC and after a bowling change what thought that we had got the prize wicket when Sam floated one up and this was hit to the covers only to be put down by Wattsy. This seemed to knocked the wind out of the OCC as they passed 100. OCC had to raise there game and when Schmidty bowled another long hop it flew off Paul Brann’s bat and thats when Pablo Flew into action in the gully with no time to think about his own safety plucked it out of the air and probably one of the best catches that will be seen at OCC for a long time. OCC knew now that they had a great chance to win the game, and when we got the next 2 wickets this left them on 120-9 and the OCC looking to rap it up soon. Well the last pair had different ideas about that and it took to the last over when a shout for LBW was upheld ( after one was turned down earlier) and OCC had completed a great victory in what was a great game that had everything and a much needed 20 points. Report: Pablo CRICKET SPY'S VIEW OF THE GAME Saturday’s game found us in the relegation zone and facing the league leaders in a home game. Perhaps this was not ideal on the one hand, but on the other hand such a challenging game did provide an ideal opportunity to bounce back from our poor recent results and more importantly the extremely embarrassing and disappointing events of the previous week’s game at Dartford. Finally Schmidty won a toss and decided to bat, much to the relief of the aged OCC side who simply couldn’t face 50 overs in the field. Whether it was the right choice from a cricketing point of view was questionable but it certainly was from a creaking bones perspective! The OCC’s score of 183 was no better than par on what was a flat wicket. Pleasingly a number of people contributed, messrs Schmidt [41] and Sterling [34] being the highest scorers, but disappointingly no-one took responsibility to go on and make the big score. We benefitted from several dropped catches, most notably the one off Pabs early on, and Yamma’s little cameo in the last over left us all with a more positive attitude to the game at half way than we might have otherwise had. Mark Bakers’s spell of 4 for not many showed that line and length and setting a sensible field was the way to bowl on this wicket, the only question was whether our bowlers could manage to do this or not in the second half! The Tenterden innings was strange for a number of reasons. Our old side quickly became tired after having to move the covers on and off the square several times in what became a rain affected game. We also benefitted from a number of moments of fortune when we bowled, with our oppo players for once nicking off, and in addition there were two extremely fortunate incidents when oppo batsman played on. Chanda is still probably wondering how he managed to do so to a ball that was a foot down leg side and which hit his poles via his thigh pad?! So we had our oppo at 60-6, and things seemed rosy in the OCC garden. This soon changed however, as a partnership developed which took the score to 100-6, and worryingly the game was back in the balance. And then it happened, the moment that might have just saved our season and which will long stand in the memory...... Schmidty, having bowled a mixed bag [long hops and half volleys mainly] decided that the inform oppo batter would probably benefit from receiving a rank long hop outside off stump. Indeed he was correct, the batsman rocked back and cut the ball like a rocket towards the backwards point boundary. But he hadn’t been banking on that man Pabs being in the gully – the ball was snapped up in an instance, and Pabs stood erect to receive the plaudits that duly came [only once the rest of our fielding team had got over their utter shock!]. Off trailed the danger man, shaking his head as he went, and surely now the game was won. Well not quite! A last wicket partnership of over 50 was extremely frustrating to watch, particularly as it lasted for over an hour and resulted in yet another 8:30 finish. Forgetting the drinking fraternity within the side for a moment, this partnership came within 5 balls of denying us a victory and only 11 runs short of gaining Tenterden an incredible win. It didn’t seem relevant at the time, but taking drinks at 7:15 nearly cost us dear, as we lost 2 overs from the game given the 20 overs from 7:20 rule. But the final wicket did tumble and a relieved and happy OCC trudged off to a later beer than expected. All in all the result was far more important that the performance. We batted OK, but were probably were 20 runs short of our target, mainly due to a slow middle period. We have also bowled far better this season and lost, but we got that bit of luck at the right time along with bowling some good balls. We also were helped by our oppo missing 3 key players, a fact that our side should reflect on in the weeks to come as we need ALL of our players available week in week out if we are going to achieve what we want to. Going to weddings and the like during the day is obviously a no go at the best of times, but when it is for your baby sitters’ wedding then you really should be looking inwardly at yourself and deciding if playing cricket is really what you want to be doing. The wickets were shared around the bowlers as follows; Yamma 4-43, Bradders 3-67, Sam 1-10, Watts 1-13 and Schmidty 1-26. Our fielding also wasn’t great apart from that Pabs catch! Next week is a key week, putting back to back wins on the board will give us a little breathing space from the teams below us. But a final thought on this week should go to the good spirit that the game with Tenterden was played in. It was refreshing not to hear verbal abuse throughout the game, and it made the match an enjoyable one for all concerned. Well done as well to our oppo for having the good grace to have a beer and chat after the game, something that we still believe in as a club but disappointingly fewer and fewer others seem to anymore. We look forward to the rematch in 9 weeks time. Report: Cricket Spy • Back to top |
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