Another lovely day for cricket and the useless captain calls wrong on tbe toss and we are in the field again! And with Yasser was not able to open the bowling owing to arriving in Bourne with no kit, a tidy spell by Dave Lovelock and Hassnain was essential to keep Bourne from racking up a big score. Fortunately they bowled well and with Hass inducing a lofted cover drive and Richard Morris taking a smart catch, we restricted them in the early stages. Aves Nawaz then bowled an excellent spell of straight spin bowling picking up a couple of wickets and all was looking good. Bourne’s middle order of experienced bats got the score moving after the departure of their opener for 31 off 28 overs but the introduction of some tricky leg spin did the trick and Bourne succumbed to 198 all out with Richard Morris taking 5 for 27 as he destroeyed the tail.

Teas proved my toss loss was not such a bad thing as none of us would have wanted to bowl and field after such a splendid repast. And when Yogi tried to make up for his kit faux pas by bringing in some pizzas, many of the team were well stuffed before batting and then again while batting! Asif (birthday boy) Ali batted unusually aggressively for a splendid 72 in a great partnership with dogged opener Keith (I can cut and pull but not drive in the air) Markham 52 of about 140. Needing only 50 odd off 17 overs with 9 wickets in hand, how could we lose? After both Asif and Keith holed out to lofted drives within a few balls of each other, the batting then collapsed with a couple of unnecessary run outs not helping the cause and we ended 8 runs short. Very frustrating,
so a curry was needed. So with Easton beating Orton Park, we are still in danger of relegation. 3 games left in September which we need to win!