at Rayleigh Sports & Social Club, June 9th 2013
League Game
Team: Adam Bailey, Liam Baker, Joe Barnett†, Jamie Coleman, Jack Collins, Alex Dawkins, Jack Hadlow, Tom King, Craig Smith*, David Watts, Edward Wright.
It was a cold morning in normally sunny Rayleigh as this derby took place.
Craig Smith, captain, lost the toss and we were put in to bat. Craig and Joe Barnett opened and looked to score when they could against some good bowling. They started with quick running when the keeper misfielded whilst trying to hit the bad balls. Unfortunately Craig quickly tried to hit a good ball and was out, caught, for 1 in the second over.
Adam Bailey joined Joe, both stroke players. Adam showed this with a superbly hit 6 whilst Joe scored 3 fours and then a 6. Adam went quite quickly, bowled, whilst Joe remained and even played some defensive shots to good deliveries. Alex Dawkins joined Joe and managed to score reasonably well whilst also playing the good deliveries with respect. Joe was finally caught on 22 and the rest of the batting line up failed to really push on. When Alex was out, also for 22, the innings seemed destined to peter to a quiet finish. It was not to be as we added 15 runs from the final over taking the innings total to 92 for 7.
In the second half Tom King and Jamie Coleman opened the bowling as Rayleigh Fairview looked to push the score along by turning ones into twos, Jamie managed a wicket in his first over. Possibly he is turning into our Graeme Swann? Harry Barham showed everyone how to bat running singles and twos with only 1 boundary. He retired on 25.
Craig and Alex bowled next and generally succeeded in keeping RF from scoring freely. After 10 overs RF were 15 runs behind where we had been. With a relatively low total to defend this match was always likely to go to the end and so it proved. Jamie had taken two wickets in his first spell, Alex picked one up in his but Rayleigh Fairview kept scoring and after 15 overs they were 3 runs ahead of our score at the same point.
Jack Hadlow and Liam Baker both bowled with Jack taking a wicket before Jamie came back for the 18th over – dot, one, dot, wicket, wicket, four. Two wickets giving Jamie figures of 4-0-18-4, but was it enough?
Jack bowled the 19th over – dot, dot, one, dot, dot, four. A pretty good over but the boundary took Rayleigh Fairview to 94 for 6 and the win they had been moving towards.
Overall a pretty good attempt. We got a little tied up in last half of our innings but Rayleigh Fairview bowled well. We bowled and fielded pretty well in the second innings but it wasn’t quite enough.
The sun never came out either.
Next week: home to SOSEMT.