Why have just one pre-season game when you can have two? In a year in which Romsey Town has entered a cup competition for the first time since 1997, it was also decided that we'd have two warm-ups before our first league match. After getting thumped by our usual post-season opponents, NCI, on Saturday, we were to face our traditional pre-season opposition, Remnants, today.
We started the match brilliantly, Rog Shelley (0/1) conceding just a single run from his opening (eight-ball) over before mysteriously being taken off. Dave Clark (0/12), Paul Jordan (0/13) and Marcelino Gopal (0/12) were also pretty economical - and whilst Tom Jordan (2/27) was more expensive, his spell also included bowling ex-Romsey boy George Speller for a second-ball duck. We closed out the innings with the least experienced Romsey player (debutante Manju, 0/15) and the most experienced Romsey player (captain Andy Owen, 1/8) keeping Remnants to less than a run a ball.
Our pursuit of this rather unimposing total began well enough, with Nick Clarke (20) and Jon Steele (24) both looking good, but then we had a Romsey Collapse (TM), the lowlight of which was a very unhappy Dave Clark being run out without facing a ball. Things were looking very bad indeed until our other debut player, Tom Woolford (31*) got us back into contention. It was still touch and go evening coming into the final over which, like last year, was to be bowled by Joe White (yet another ex-Romsey player). This time around there weren't any no-ball controversies (mainly as Joe was bowling off spin) and instead we had the excitement of the tieing run being taken off the final ball.
That meant today's match wasn't only the second tie between these two teams, but also our third tie in our last five games. Weird, huh?