Suttoners Match Reports For Saturday + Youth Reports For that Week------20th, 21st, 22nd  May

Heavy overnight rain on Friday and showers on Saturday afternoon meant that only a handful of games were played in the Dorset Cricket Leagues. Once again the Kinson Manor drainage system did us proud and we managed to complete both games.

With the 1^st eleven game called off early, our club captain, Chris Rawlings offered his services as umpire for this match.  I seized this opportunity to rest an injured bowling arm muscle and asked Creepy to play instead of me. Unfortunately one of our players decided not to turn up and I had to play any way (more on this later). While I was “out of the team”, Adrian Ward (stand in captain) made a complete hash of the toss and their skipper asked us to bat. With Clive removed from the 2^nd XI a new opening partnership was formed by the two Christopher’s Vallis and Davies. As an opener myself I must say what a fantastic job they did. Solid in defence, hitting the bad balls and all in all playing rather nicely, their partnership was worth 74 before CV cruelly adjudged LBW for 38.  Despite several rain interruptions both players kept the momentum and allowed us to build a useful score of 173-6. CD was finally out for 40 and there were good contributions from Graham Martin 19, Fitzy 17no and Nick Dennett (13) and Rendy 12 at the end. It was great to have 4 quality seam bowlers to choose from and Frankie and Bingsy effectively killed the game in the first 12 overs. Chasing a revised target of 135 from 35 they were under pressure with 24-2 from 12 and from there the wickets continued to fall. Bingsy took 2 in his last over to return 12-4-20-2 and Frank finished with 8-2-21-2 . Creepy had remarkable figures of 7-4-6-3 he also claimed the 2 run outs 1 of which was brilliant and the other one wouldn’t have looked out of place on You’ve Been Framed. Rendy also had a bowl with the nagging figures of 3-2-1-1. So all in all, a successful day. Yes it was cold, yes it was damp and yes it is supposed to be May. We stuck at it, we didn’t moan, we had a laugh and we made the best of a bad situation. We only get 18 weeks of cricket if we are lucky, leaving us 34 weeks to wish we were playing. On the subject of the player not turning up, I am not very happy. If you are picked for a team then you should have the common decency to either play for that team or ring the skipper and make yourself unavailable. On no account should you not turn up. We were fortunate to have enough players to cover it this week another time we may not be so lucky. A great 20 points and a fantastic win! Oh and it was good fun as well !!!!!

A fantastic win in horrible conditions. For the first time as captain I lost the toss, and we were put into bat.We scored 243-7 with Adam (46), Matty (39 and taylor (89) the highest scorers.In reply they scored 62 all out, both Richie Ballam( 12-4-3-17) and Ben (10-4-2-13) opening the bowling.This allowed Derek(4.4-0-3-14) and Kenny to clear up the remainder of their innings with their usual reliable spells. More improvement needed in the field, other than that Well done !!

Match rained off

Dorset & Hamshire league tables 20th May 2006