Google
 
Saturday 5th XI - Match Reports 5th XI vs Woodmanstern 5th XI - Saturday 5th June 2010

With the promise of excellent availability of players available for Saturday 19th June 2010, the third Orpington 5th team game of the season was arranged. The opposition was agreed to be Woodmanstern Cricket Club, in Surrey, against their 5th team, who were playing their first ever game, as they were also experiencing strong availability of players.

With a predominantly Colts team (and no I’m not counting Frank Penfold or Adam Page as Colts, despite their boyish ‘good looks’ and immaturity !!), we set about defending the honour of Kent against Surrey.

With the game agreed to be a ‘Declaration’ game, rather than limited overs, Orpington batted first, looking to set another massive total, as they had done in the recent weeks. Unfortunately, wickets started to fall early on, with the Orpington batsmen all looking to smash the ball over ‘cow corner’ for Six, instead of actually playing correct cricket strokes and using their patience. The Woodmansterne bowlers had not done anything other than bowl slow and straight, but this was something which ‘out-foxed’ the batsmen. After 10 overs, Orpington were struggling on 30 runs, for the loss of 5 wickets, with only Sam Beveridge having spent longer than 4 overs at the crease, for his total of 12 runs. Tom Mellish had also added a quick fire 12 runs.

With the ‘old and wise head’ of Adam Page now at the crease, he looked to steady the ship for Orpington, with his batting partner, the sensible George Atkinson. Together they both spent over 30 minutes building a partnership, looking to build a score. Due to his age, Adam told his partner that he didn’t want to run any singles and therefore in his time at the wicket, scored an essential 22 runs, comprising entirely of boundaries, which included 4 x Fours and 1 x Six (the only Six of the match as Pagey asked me to point out!). George added 9 runs, but unfortunately both batsmen fell in quick succession. This bought Jack Goulds and Gary Constable (who had unfortunately been promoted to number 9, due to the reluctance of George Nicholas or Frank Penfold to bat higher than 10 or 11!) to the crease. With the score now on 66 runs, but the innings only 21 overs and a little over 1 hour old, Orpington were in trouble. With both batsmen agreeing to stay at the wicket for as long as possible and play defensively, the great escape was started. After close to 45 minutes of the pair batting, unfortunately Gary missed a straight one and was bowled, having added a partnership of 52 runs with Jack.

With Jack showing magnificent talent and batting beautifully, he continued to dispatch the Woodmansterne bowling to the boundaries. In the final over of the innings, Jack looked to smash a Six back over the bowlers head, but unfortunately was caught. Having scored an exhilarating 71 runs, which beat his previous highest score by an amazing 60 runs, there were now 3 balls remaining of the Orpington innings. Jack had ensured that over 100 runs in total had been added to the score since he came to the crease. The final ball of the innings saw George Nicholas try to hit one more boundary, but unfortunately he was bowled, having scored a very useful 14 runs, which was the third highest score of the innings. A very good contribution from the youngest member of the Orpington team.

Following tea and with the belief that they now had a very good score to defend, the Orpington Bowling attack set to work. Following his excellent batting at the end of the innings, George Nicholas was given the first over, with Frank Penfold bowling from the other end. Both bowled well, but found that any bad balls were dispatched to the boundary by the Woodmanstern opening batsmen. Frank took the wickets of both opening batsmen thanks to good catches from Sam Beveridge and George Atkinson. Jacob Bullard and George Atkinson then continued the attack, with George picking up a wicket thanks to another brilliant diving catch from Sam. With regular bowling changes now taking place, saw ‘The Adam Page Show’ begin. Pagey agreed to be our wicket keeper for the day and showed exceptional skills behind the stumps, taking a stumping off the bowling of Stephen Marle and 2 catches, 1 off the bowling of ‘Man of the Match’ Jack Goulds and the other from Lee Barlow.

With the Woodmanstern batsmen batting wisely and picking off the bad balls, they reached their target of 169 from 36 overs, with the loss of 6 wickets.

This meant the first loss of the season for the Orpington 5th team, but following a very shaky start, we played a very competitive game and had it not been for some bad luck in the field, including some dropped catches, we could have won the game.

I would like to thank everyone who played and I hope you are all available again next week. Thanks also to Steve Moffatt for arranging the fixture.

Report: Gary Constable

• Back to top

  
Playing Today - Home
Fixtures, Results & Reports
Saturday 1st XI
Saturday 2nd XI
Saturday 3rd XI
Saturday 4th XI
Saturday 5th XI
Sunday 1st XI
Nomads Womans 1st XI
    Disclaimer  Compare Broadband © Orpington Cricket Club 2012