After our humbling loss on Sunday, we really wanted a win tonight so we'd be able to go into Saturday's league game with a bit more confidence. And while we had something close to a full strength team, there was the highly notable absensce of Andy Owen, missing from a Rosmey eleven for only the second time this decade.
Still, things began smoothly enough, with Daniel Mortlock (1/15), Marcelino Gopal (0/16) and Jon Steele (1/8) using the new ball reasonably well before "Winker" Watson (1/5) and Nick Clarke (1/13) slowed things down to arguably even greater effect. Maybe more important was that our fielding was top-notch: Malcolm Creek completed a sharp stumping; Daniel took a nice one-handed catch; Nick was awesome in stopping an endless succession of cover drives at marginally silly mid-off; and Richard Rex, Rod Dennis and Jon were all impeccable further from the bat. Despite a minor late-innings blow-out, we kept Remnants to double figures, and were surely half way to a first victory for 2010.
We then got a bit of a reality check as the Remnants attack reduced us to 13/3 before Jon Steele (36 off ?? balls) and Daniel Mortlock (20 off 26 balls) put on fifty-odd runs in relative comfort. We once again stumbled in our amble to victory when ex-Romsey leg-spinner Tom Jordan ripped out three quick wickets; this was quickly followed by a crazy run out and Winker retiring hurt after going for a big shot off his first ball. The result was that it came down to our last wicket pair, Andy Owen (12* off 10 balls) and Malcolm Creek (5* off 3 balls) to get us over the line . . . which they duly did when Andy was presented with a juicy full toss off the last ball of the penultimate over.