Report from Nigel Bishop
In what was finally starting to feel like cricket weather, the Twos headed over to Bentworth buoyed by last week’s win. The professional outfit we are, we arrived early in order to leave plenty of time for a fielding warm up….time which was in fact spent parked on the road outside waiting for the guy with the key to the gate to turn up.
Oaks Bat First
It didn’t matter, we batted first any way. The top order were getting starts and failing to progress with the bat, but excelling with scoring and umpiring instead. At 50-4 it was on a knife edge, but a partnership of 37 between Ian Bennett & Alex Brundle started to steady the nerves.
The game was poised again at 98-6 before a partnership between George Lethaby and Alex Brundle started to take the game away with some sensible batting and running between the wickets, Alex falling just shy of a well deserved 50 on 47. George continued to work with the tail pushing the score to comfortable 201 and posting his own half century in the process.
Bentworth Slow then Quick
Although on paper Bentworth is a team we should be looking to beat week in week out, they have turned out to be somewhat of a bogey team for Captain Jack, who has failed to beat them on the last 3 occasions. They have three or four good bats I’m told, each of whom can take the game away from you.
The Bentworth innings started slowly, which isn’t too much of a surprise when taking account of the combined age of the opening partnership. Not to mention bowling from Dave Bowers and Big Mike that would have left Scrooge thinking “blimey that was a bit tight”. At 15 overs Bentworth were on 56 – 4 and looking out of it. The change bowlers also did well, particularly a confident George following his 50 with figures of 3-35.
Big Gay threatens to take it away…
Nick Gay has proven a match winner on previous occasions and at arrival at the crease he didn’t spend much time before demonstrating why. Powerful hitting over the long on boundary saw the Bentworth run rate accelerate to such at point that at 32 overs they were 129-4 and well in with a shout.
It has to be said however, on reflection, that none of the sixes raining down on the Oakley men were anything as big as Ian’s whopper earlier in the day. Thankfully, Big Mike came back on and dismissed Gay with the first ball of his new spell. After that the total proved to be too big an ask with some good concise lines from Alex and Big Mike, with Bentworth finishing far short on 168-7.
Catches Win Matches
They say catches win matches, and the Oaks held on to 6 of them. One of them in particular was worthy of mention, the ball flying over his left shoulder captain Jack plucked a four ball out of the air in what the rest of the team could only begrudgingly agree was quite a good catch. We also dropped a few, but what the heck….that no longer matters and the Twos start the season with two wins from two.
On we go…