It’s a marathon not a sprint, but it really helps if you know how to hold a bat as rustiness and down right foolishness halted the charge to the Premier Division. Inclement weather prior to the start made the winning the toss an important factor in the seasons first competitive game at home against Great Waltham but IB called wrong (tails never fails) and we were put in. White ran out Tex, and Gilmore just ran himself out in a madcap start to the game. Henson and Williams top scored with 24 and others contributed but we never looked like we were going to put a decent partnership together. 135 was all we had to play with.
Category: 2010 Reports
Aythorpe Roding vs.1st XI
An under strength Rayleigh 1st XI visited the lovely village of Aythorpe Roding at the weekend with a final opportunity to get some practice in before the season proper. IB won’t the toss and elected to bat with Boycott (Darren Smith) and himself opening. Boycs managed to double last weeks score in half the amount of time (5 runs, 12 over’s) with IB pushing on from the other end giving us a solid foundation. Boycs finally played on trying a rare attacking shot bringing Cook to the crease. He didn’t disappoint scoring a fantastic 104 carrying his bat and taking an early lead in the batting cup (which is currently deep inside Pakistani territory).
1st XI vs. Little Waltham
The sun shone bright all day over Little Waltham but unfortunately a dark cloud followed the Rayleigh first XI for the majority of the day. What looked to be an opportunity to build on a convincing win against Rankins last week turned into a frustrating loss with a number of factors to be taken into consideration.
Ian Bryant won the toss and elected to field with the reassurance that Mike ‘I hate the Labour Party’ Walsh and Ben ‘I couldn’t get a tan if I tried’ Stevens were to take the new ball. As it panned out it wasn’t the bowling attack that failed but the fielding unit with cheap runs and dropped catches making the difference. The culprits on this day were Jason Ox and Marcus Cornish – two excellent fielders who showed early season jitters.