Report by Cameron Petrie:
Well, the scores shown at the top tell a fairly sorry tale. The worrying part is that the result could have been SO much worse, while it is somewhat cheering to note that if the cricketing gods had granted us two or three favours, it could all have been SO much better.
On the positive side, the weather was glorious and we had a full eleven, but the fact that Huw Davies (formerly of Vienna CC in Austria!) was making his Romsey debut, and Andy had had to make not one or two but three dips into the CCA's additional players list, shows that our stock players reserves are worryingly low. Linton II had lost their two previous games of the season but were fielding "probably their strongest eleven" today, while we had a bye and a non-completed game giving us little indication of anyone's form.
With Romsey winning the toss and taking the field and Linton's openers marching out some of our questions were quickly answered. The first two overs pretty much summed up our bowling performance overall, as we alternated between fantastic and different levels of terrible. Stefan van Eeden's (3/20 off eight overs) first two overs went for a miserly two runs, but Hugh's (0/34 off four overs) first over saw a few great balls, but overall a struggle to control the swinging ball and gifting a few too many wides. Andy (2/27 off eight overs) wisely chose to bring himself on and rotate Hugh to the other end, but he served up a juicy full toss that was dismissively spanked before he found his length. Stefan momentarily lost his mojo and sprayed a few wides around, before Andy drew a mishit and we snaffled our first wicket with a neat catch at mid-on from Stefan. This brought Linton's "AJ" to the wicket, who gave himself a few sighters before proceeding to belt us all of the park. That Linton were 105 off 20 overs before they lost their second wicket, and 191 in the 31st over before losing their third says it all really. In the end we used nine bowlers, and pretty much everyone served up a mix of tight lines and full tosses/above the waist no balls/egregious wides that had the batmen variously clubbing boundaries/getting out of the way/making expansive leaves. We missed two key chances that might have transformed our fortunes as Richard Rex's (0/23 off three overs) hand-grenades bamboozled AJ such that he bopped a return catch that was unfortunately shelled, and Dave Clark (0/25 off three overs) served up a few full tosses before trapping the Linton number 4 squared up in front of all three stumps only for the umpire to shake off our bellowed appeals. Such are the whims of village cricket. For the rest Nathan Wright (0/15 off four overs) mixed the sublime (two maidens) with the less than, Paul Dawson (normally of Girton CC; 1/29 off three overs) bowled the second Linton opener, but was then smacked around, and Mani Nataratan (normally of Sharks CC; 0/25 off two overs) hit his line, but was then smacked around. With AJ on 79 off 57 balls at the end of the 30th over, and Linton on 190/2, it looked like we were in extremely deep shit. Thankfully AJ ignored his partner's advice to reset after drinks and Andy kept Stefan on for an over that completely shifted the balance of the Linton innings. First ball of the over cleaned up AJ, third ball cleaned up Linton's number five and fifth ball cleaned up Linton's number six, which in combination with a single off the last ball meant that 190/2 was suddenly 191/5. Had Linton's doughty number 4 not still been in, we actually stood a real chance of bowling them out as Stefan, Andy and Luis Carrasco (1/27 off five overs) bowled us through and picked up two more wickets along the way - both to catches by A. Owen, one a juggling chance at mid-on off Louis and the other a diving caught and bowled that shows that Andy's off-season knee op seems to have done the trick. Cam had done his best at keeper to catch or at least stop the majority of the wides and shooters, and we held three catches, but otherwise our fielding wasn't great, and involved a bit too much use of feet and legs - with one of the latter resulting in Dave Clark spending part of the Linton inning sprawled on the boundary with his shin wrapped in an ice pack.
We were all slightly relieved that we managed to contain Linton to 234/7 off their 40 overs, but there was no doubt that this was a big ask as we tucked into Faruk and Heather's sandwiches.
The old firm of Cameron Petrie (28 off 38 balls) and Richard Rex (16 off 53 balls) set out to try and overhaul the Linton total and started off pretty well, with Cam cutting a brace of very wide balls to match the required run rate in the first over, and Linton's number two bowler barely managing to land the ball on the strip in the second over which saw us to 21/0 in quick order. Cam and Richard were right on the run rate at 44/0 by the end of the 7th over before a few tight overs saw our scoring almost completely dry up. Linton then brought on AJ, who proved to be every bit as capable with the ball as he was with the bat before he bowled a head high full toss, which Cam was able to belt to the boundary, and then got one to seam into Cam's pads that would have completely missed another set of stumps, but which deflected off both of said pads and crunched into off stump. Paul ??? (22 off 35 balls) managed to resume the attack before AJ's second over was a wicket maiden that saw Richard cleaned up and Romsey suddenly stalled at 67/2 at the 15 over drinks break. Linton had evidently been quite worried while Cam and Richard were at the crease and the score gradually mounting, but with them both gone, we lost wickets regularly and of the remainder of our batting order only Stefan van Eeden (15* off 14 balls) scored more than 2 runs. The gig was clearly up, and at 117/8 and Dave Clark unable to bat, it was up to Faruk and Stefan to secure our third batting point, which we got just in time before our final wicket fell.
With the 34 extras we gifted to Linton beating our top score off the bat, it is perhaps no surprise that the winning margin was so huge. Had we bowled a little straighter, held our catches, and had a dead-cert LBW given, we would have been chasing a far more modest total, but we can only get so far on "what if"s. Thus far 2018 hasn't been our year, but a quick look at the Junior 3 South (and East?) table shows that everyone in our division except Rickling Ramblers has had at least one loss from three rounds, and even though we have lost our one completed game we are not at the bottom of the table, so it looks as though pretty much everyone is suffering from early season wobbles.