Jags Stapled

Jags 111-All Out (Matt 21, Mark 19, Hamid 3-23) lost to Stapleford Phoenix 112-6 (Minter 55*, Tyler 3-19) by 4 wickets

Man of the Match -Tyler Bennett

I'm a little behind on writing this match report, and we lost, so I'm going to employ less floric prose than normal and keep this pretty short, as it still smarts we lost this one.

A nice evening at Queens, and another league fixture. Some decent pre match banter with new opposition promised a gentlemanly match, and thus it proved. 

Matt won the toss and we batted, of course, with Matt and Barker opening. Early bowling looked tasty, and Barker struggled for a few before popping a catch high to short mid on trying to press on. Parrish looked a touch sketchy to start with, but found a few 4's with Fardell. I played and missed a bit before tickling one to the boundary for an all run 4 - which elicited cheers from the assembled throng. Scoring was a touch slow so Parrish decided to take one on and edged behind.

Fardell joined by Dan found a couple of nice 4's including a clip behind square before pitching it up to covers close in, an absolute mare of a shot to be honest just as I'd got my eye in. Dan and Phillips hung around briefly before Phillips bumped it high to the mid on fielder. No partnerships and some unwise shots to gift the opposition the initiative. The bowling was decent, to be fair.

Dan and Horner joined each other for a while, Horner hitting a lovely 4 to cow, before comically giving his wicket away. The slow non turning bowler gave it some air. Big air.

 The ball just below the apex of its delivery

James went back, forward, sideways, and did a little jig for good measure. He then committed to moving forward to defend it like a test cricketer, playing the bat really really straight just inside the line of the ball, and the ball gently moved past the bat and hit the bails. It was absolute dross all round. The gods of cricket shook their heads.

Cozzie joined Dan for a bit, hit a lovely 4 and was then caught and bowled topping it straight up. Dan was joined briefly by Liam before he decided to swing wildly across a good ball and saw his middle stump removed. He returned the pavilion and said, "I thought it was a bad ball". It wasn't, Dan.

Tyler briefly joined proceedings and hit a lovely 4 behind backwards square. The wicket keeper was hit in the face at one point, which was kind of the high point of our innings (he was ok, don't worry readers). Tyler fell caught and Liam and Savage saw out the remaining balls to get us to an utterly undefendable total of 111. Liam finished the shambles by trying to reverse push the last ball of the innings for 4 and was bowled.

Pretty much everyone had given away their wickets and no partnerships had been formed and we hadn't scored enough runs to defend. Whoopsie.

Despite the low total, Jags took to the field in enthusiastic spirits. Matt stood up to everything behind the stumps and energy was good in the field. Scoring was hard, with Liam and Tyler bowling great spells from both ends. Liam extracted the first with an unplayable ball that swung in. Tyler, not to be outdone, bowled the other with a wunderball that clattered the furniture.

The number 3 was the best batsman, and if we'd got him out, we would have had a chance. He pelted it to point where Fardell missed a tough low chance. He walloped it to covers where Tyler missed a very hard chance too. Liam Brett then hit him on the pads dead in front of middle half way up and did the lovely Stuart Broad celeb-appeal thing, so certain was he of the result. The umpire said something to the effect of, "It probably would have hit the wicket, the impact was almost completely in line, but it pitched outside off, so I think I'm going to give it not out" - giving everyone confidence that; he was going to do a thoroughly fair job of umpiring; and was absolutely not going to avoid giving their best batsman out no matter what the circumstances. No sirree bob. 

Roughly how it looked. I'm going to ask Queen's to invest in DRS

James Horner extracted one with a caught chance to Phillips. Ben Savage bowled exquisitely, being rewarded with a bowled off stump chance from a glorious action. He almost had the number 3 caught by Coslett, but the chance was shelled in the deep. There was time for the number 3 to clip one to Barker at mid off, possibly the easiest of the 4 catches, but nowhere near as bad as the hilarious LBW. So he'd had 5 lives on his way to 50.

Barker bowled well and Tyler extracted 2 late on, one caught by James and one by Liam. Tyler muttered a lot at the end, and was angry, but his 5 runs, directing one at the wicket keeper and 3 wickets earn him a MOTM gong. Hopefully that cheers him up.

We ran it close, despite the low total and fielded pretty well apart from the catches. Great glovework from the skipper and our heads didn't drop till the end. I'm not going to blame it all on the LBW as we should have held our catches, and they seemed like a nice bunch of chaps, but it was a bad decision even at the low low level at which we play, made all the more hilarious by the explanation. Ah well.

Pub attendance was good from both sides - I didn't get there in time for pizza though - so this whole evening can get in the bin as far as I'm concerned.