Oakley turned up to the picturesque location of IBM Hursley for a game of cricket where we were going to aim to try and finish the season on a high, but it was not going to be an easy task.
To start with stand-in captain for 10 minutes Ian Bennett (DJ was stuck in traffic) did the toss and in true captain’s fashion lost it and IBM elected to bat. Neil Robinson and Dave Bowers were given the new ball and told to plug away at the openers which they duly did. The line and lengths were spot on giving the openers nothing to play with. Then a loose shot from the opener landed in the hands of Will Cheyney which was a good grab rewarding Dave for his excellent start. At the other end, Neil was bowling some fantastic stuff and ended up getting two knicks behind to Ian. The opening spells between the two yielded 3 wickets and not many runs conceded.
Then coming on to bowl were Brad Compton-Bearne and Josh Carpenter. Brad only got given 3 overs and was told to come back on later at the death. Unfortunately, that second spell never came as seeing Brad on the boundary with his hands on his knees dying from sunburn and heat exhaustion meant his fitness was deemed not good enough to come back on (ridiculous really for someone who’s clearly in such great shape). The IBM middle order started to build a partnership as Josh and Brad were unsuccessful in taking wickets, so on came captain for the day Dan Jones.
Into DJ’s first over and he broke the partnership straight away as the batsman drilled one to cover. Fortunately for him, the cover fielder at the time was Brad Compton-Bearne, so he’s probably going to get a four her…but bugger me, somehow Brad flopped to the side like a salmon and took a one-handed grab. This amazed his teammates as to how he grabbed it and amazed Brad more that he’d managed to get down that quickly. It was like 20 stone Dwayne Leverock for Bermuda in the 2007 World Cup.
Later on, Tom Dickinson (Timmy or Jack Brundle’s mate) came on and bowled some tidy stuff. He was rewarded with a wicket from a decent spell courtesy of a fine take from Ian Bennett behind the stumps, towards the end of the innings we could see why IBM are top of the league as every batsman that kept coming in could clearly play cricketing shots and hold a bat. The IBM tail wagged and got them up to a very good score of 218-9. Overall, I would say the bowling and fielding from Oakley was very good, we just come up against a team that clearly doesn’t get bowled out cheaply.
Then onto the batting which we knew wasn’t going to be easy. At 0-2 soon to be followed for 16-6. we realised that maybe we weren’t going to spoil the title-winning party today. At one point Brad and Neil Robinson were standing in the middle at 16-6, saying “imagine if we both scored centuries and won the game here” but then the score was 32-7 and we realised our mythical dream was not going to happen. I don’t imagine many people from Oakley will want to remember their batting performances, so I won’t go into detail although I (Brad) was given caught behind when the ball actually hit my pad and not the bats. Maybe I could’ve got my ideological dream of a century but now we will never know. I mean it wasn’t going to matter as were pretty crap and nowhere near the target set. As a consolation, Will Rabley in I believe his first 1st XI game batted really well and ended the day 25 not out. This made him the top scorer with Oakley all out for 86.
IBM were worthy winners and bowled really well. They deserve their title-winning season. IBM celebrated with champagne but as great hosts, they did cook pizzas and chips for the Oakley boys. In all honesty, the chips were bloody lovely. It’s a shame that as IBM have now gone up as we can’t possibly play them next season. Meaning can’t come back and have another portion of chips.
Congratulations to IBM and I’m sure they will stay in County 2 next year with their team. For Oakley, promotion ambitions should still be there next year and I can’t see why a title push cannot be achieved. We just need to get better at a few things.