Scorecard

Great Waltham Cricket Club 1st XI v Great Baddow I on Sat 26 May 2018 at 1pm
Great Waltham Cricket Club Won by 46 runs

Match report After last week’s drubbing at the hands of Rayleigh, the 1st XI looked to bounce back against unbeaten Great Baddow. With Simon living it up with the lads in Marbella, a new opening partnership was formed with 2 veterans of the first team. After flashing some semblance of early season form Gary was promoted to the top of the order as we looked to build a big first innings score in the searing heat.

Big runs hasn’t been our strong suit in the opening few games and with a fairly quick outfield our top order would look to cash in to ignite our form. The new opening partnership was gelling well until Dave got a leading edge off one that stopped in the pitch; a sign of things to come. Gary was adapting to his new role well rotating the strike, punishing the bad ball and seemed content to break his 7 year streak of not leaving a ball. With the Baddow opening bowlers keeping tight, Gary and I had to be content on taking singles and hitting the odd bad ball for 4. We were steady through the opening overs, never really looking in too much danger but not looking to take too many risks.

Just as Gary got in, he surprisingly top edged a sweep to the man at deep square, perhaps a little unlucky as it flew so far. Haley was bowling consistently and with little error for a bowler his age; through 5 overs he had only gone for 9 runs. It was left to me and Bloom Jnr to try and build a foundation for our powerful lower order to take advantage of. The middle overs were nip and tuck as Baddow maintained a tight field whilst Dan and I attempted to get a grip of the bowlers. Huartson also bowled tightly in his initial spell. Again just as Dan was getting in, he was squared up on the back foot and adjudged LBW by the apologetic umpire. Perhaps Dan was put off by the opponent’s ‘apparent’ intimate knowledge of him as a person and player.

With just less than 20 overs left I was hoping another strong partnership to push us north of 200 on a pitch which was deteriorating. Albie was the next man up and quickly set about his work, dangerously, yet productively, sweeping Haley. This upturn in run rate and intensity awoke me from my relative slumber as we set about the Baddow bowling. Despite Ollie’s injury we ran hard between the wickets turning 1s into 2s and 2s into 3s. Having had a look at JT’s meticulous scoring, it’s interesting to see how few dot balls were faced in the partnership once Ollie had got in. It makes it so hard for a captain to keep the run rate down when good balls are going for singles and twos and the bad balls are being batted to the boundary. My over enthusiasm for running cost me my left pad and then eventually Ollie his wicket as he tried to limp back for a second and was run out. His 54 ball stay at the crease yielded 47 runs with 4 boundaries and he was desperately unlucky to fall short of what would have been a well-deserved half century. He gave the innings some well needed momentum and was in my opinion, the chief reason we were able to get up to 226, which I considered to be a slightly above average total.

We went into tea knowing that we would have to bowl well but that we had an excellent chance to hand Baddow their first defeat of the season. Our start in the field was extremely lacklustre to say the least. Maybe we lacked a Chappyesque speech to get us going but we were either too floaty or tried to bang it in half way down bouncing the ball 3 times for the exasperated Gary. After 5 overs Baddow had raced to 39 and I was starting to worry that our score was 70 runs short of where it needed to be. The 1st wicket seemed to galvanise us as Ollie was able to induce a nick to ‘bucket hands’ Dave at a wide first slip. After that we started bowling properly again, as though someone had flicked a switch from brainless cricket to demons in the field, tight and accurate bowling cricket. We gave up 31 runs from overs 5 to 15.

Tails proved his versatility as a bowler by switching to a down the hill bowler in the mould of miserly Chappy. Unlike Chappy though he never complained about bowling 10 straight through in the heat. With Ollie bowling through from one end we set in for the long haul and looked to increase the pressure on the Baddow batsmen to go big. Ollie was able to remove Woolf with an absolute peach of a delivery, nipping away to hit off stump. However, it was the end of Albie that proved to be the turning point in the Baddow innings. I’ve been told by a number of people that Chappy’s leg spin effectively changed the game for us on Saturday and I’m inclined to agree. The Baddow batsmen seemed to have no clue how to play Lewis and at a time they should have been accelerating towards victory Lewis was able to pump the brakes. First he got the opener to top edge a sweep to an onrushing Joe Reed who take a good catch running in from deep square leg. An eerily similar dismissal to that of Gary’s earlier in the day.

Next he was able to induce and edge behind and then entice a mistimed slog to Dave at long on. In between all this Josh Fitz was able to produce a stunning run out from short fine leg, one which brought cries of excitement from himself and Luke at deep midwicket but mainly from Josh. Baddow had lost 36-4 in 10 overs to break almost any chance they had of winning the match, a stance which they seemed to agree with. The game seemed to peter out with very little incidence from there on in. Reedy bowled tidily in his 7 overs at the death and it would have been nice to see his figures without the no balls. All in all past the first five overs we bowled with control and exerted enough pressure to force the Baddow batsmen into mistakes.

VIVO Perfect Catch of the Match – Joe Reed for his catch at deep square
TATA Nexon Super Striker of the Match – I was looking forward to winning the 6s award for perhaps the 1st and only time but it’s been replaced by this award. Luckily I was able to beat Ollie out by 4 hundredths to prove my striking credentials.
FBB Stylish Player of the Match – Ollie Fitz for a swashbuckling 47 and his 2 wickets. Hopefully he’ll take some rehab lessons from Joe so he can make it back for 2 and reach 50 next time.
The Lewis Tucker award for playing whilst injured – Ollie Fitz
Man of the Match – Despite dropping what was a fairly easy catch for any Chapman, Lewis was able to come back from that to bowl a match defining spell. It speaks to the testament of character of Lewis that he was able to come back from it.

p.s. 36 extras isn't great. I'd really hope to see an improvement in that area of the game. Cut those in half an we win by a much greater margin. Just me nitpicking.

Great Waltham Cricket Club 1st XI Batting
Player Name RunsMB4s6sSRCtStRo
extras
TOTAL :
16w 5b 3lb 
for 6 wickets
24
226		        
Gary Bloom ct ? b Haley 22 47 3 46.81 1
David Clout ct ? b Nuttal 13 17 2 76.47 2
Samuel Harris b Huarton 95 104 9 2 91.35
Daniel Bloom lbw Haley 16 35 2 45.71
Ollie Fitzwater run out ? 47 54 4 87.04
Ryan Brown b Huartson 2 5 40.0 1
Luke Tanner Not Out  1 3 33.33
Joshua Fitzwater   1
Lewis Chapman  
Joe Reed  
James Taylor  

Great Baddow I Bowling

Player nameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Evans-Green10.005500.005.50
Nuttal10.0144144.004.40
Haley10.0132216.003.20
Huartson10.0142142.004.20
Olivers4.003200.008.00
Buckstone1.00600.006.00

Great Baddow I Batting
Player name RMB4s6sSR
extras
TOTAL :
6nb 16w 11b 3lb 
for 9 wickets
36
180 (45.0 overs)		     
Huartson ct D.Clout b O. Fitzwater 20
Simmonds ct J. Reed b L. Chapman 27
Woolf b O. Fitzwater 18
Nuttal b J. Taylor 21
Buxton ct G. Bloom b L. Chapman 12
Evans-Green run out J. Fitzwater 2
Osborne ct D. Clout b L. Chapman 14
Lucy Retired Out  15
J. Haley run out R. Brown 6
D. Haley Not Out  2
Olivers Not Out  0

Great Waltham Cricket Club 1st XI Bowling

Player NameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Joshua Fitzwater8.012300.002.88
Ollie Fitzwater10.0152226.005.20
James Taylor10.0221121.002.10
Lewis Chapman10.0038312.673.80
Joe Reed7.003000.004.29