Jags 101-10 (Parrish 39*, Barker 25, Duffy 3-13) lost to Cambourne CC 102-2 (Hasan 72*, Savage 1-16) by 8 wickets
MOTM - Barker
I would hazard a guess that when we've lost games where we are in fact the main reason for the loss, 9 times out of 10, they are lost by us letting ourselves down in the fielding department. Dropped catches, missed stumpings and run outs, or choosing to give a batsman scoring freely 9 lives or so.
This game was thoroughly lost by us not putting on anything resembling a decent total as a whole host of us just threw our wickets away in a bizarre performance of inept batting. It's not really like us, but it did happen. I was there to witness it and played my part.
Some regulars had declined to attend owing to a game of kick ball being played in Germania on this particular evening. Also, Chris Mailes cancelled with less
Parrish and Meldal started proceedings. Meldal fell early to a skied chance, with one that stuck in the pitch. Boudy then edged behind to the keeper first ball, meaning I had to wander out to face a hat-trick ball. I survived that (by closing my eyes no less), but never settled, and was bowled middle stump with an ungainly hoick to try and get going. We were 3 runs for 3 wickets, in less than 2 overs, and Matt was pulling that face he's had to pull a few times - the "oh my goodness, do I have to do this all myself again!".
How I currently look to every single bowler I face
Barker came in, and as Matt hoped, he stuck around facing the majority of the strike. After a false start of sorts, we got going, with strike rotation, shots and fun times from these two gents. Barker was particularly strong down the wicket and on the sweep, and Parrish was walloping it when he got to face it, which was not very often. This propelled us to 50 odd runs, which had seemed quite out of reach 2 overs in.
Barker eventually perished, just not quite hitting one down the ground and being caught. Warburton came in, a late sub, and gamely ran and pushed lots of singles to keep the rate up. Matt was still really not facing much of the ball at all, but he was still there, and that is important for reasons.
Warburton then ran himself out chasing a non-existent run. It was good he ran himself out, as this mean Matt might get to face some more bowling at some point. Sabin joined Matt and ran an all action 4. This prompted one of favourite moments of the evening (I was umpiring so could hear) when Matt called Sabin over for a chat between overs and just said to Sabin words to the effect of - "you look tired after running 4, so we're going to pretend to be having a long chat about tactics and what not, but the truth is just stay here for a bit, I'll talk and you catch your breath fella".
Sabin and Matt got us to 84-6, when Sabin fell bowled. P Cooper joined Matt. They moved things along, but then Paul was caught and bowled to a very nice ankle high grab. G Baker joined Matt for a bit, and we were fast running out of partners for our skipper.
Baker fell, run out to a suicide 2 leaving us at 101-8 with 16 balls to go. Matt carefully instructed Tyler to rotate the strike and give Matt a chance to get us to 120. Tyler went hard first ball and was caught. 101-9. Sausage then strolled out and Matt gave him the exact same talk, nothing silly, let's play out the over and get me on strike. He then pitched it up for an easy catch. Team hat trick to finish. 101 all out.
Matt somehow went through a 106 ball innings and only faced 34 balls. I would say that 7 or so of our wickets were thrown away and defending 101 is, erm, not likely on a nice deck.
Not to spoil it for you, but we didn't defend it. We seemed to have decided that if we hadn't batted well, then we didn't need to field well either.
Bennett and Sausage opened up. Sausage bowled really well, castling one of the openers at 22-1. Their other opener, playing in sunglasses, was hitting some absolutely class shots from the off and looked the man to get if we had even a slim chance of defending this meagre total.
Barker came in for Bennett. We then dropped their opener the first time (P Cooper, covers). Barker then extracted their number 3 with a catch to leave it at 59-2 to give us the tiniest bit of hope.
The amount of hope we had at this point
We were lost at this point really, so we just chirped, chirped and chirped some more. I was particularly proud of saying, "come on boys, net run rate is a factor here" when the batsmen briefly slowed down, causing both umpires to bend over laughing. I'm contributing somehow, lads.
We then dropped their opener again (cow ish - J Barker), in keeping with the theme of the evening. None was an easy chance, but if you're going to drop one, make it not the guy who is scoring all the runs. Cooper came in for an over, and was hit about a fair bit.
They got there in 11 overs. We put too few on the board to have a chance, and then didn't really give ourselves a chance in the field. The chirp was good. We went to the pub and talked about burgers.
If Chris Mailes has turned up, we were certain to have won this at a canter. He didn't, so we lost, and we will never ever forget it.
Also Chris, pay your match fees.
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