May 22nd Fleckney 1’s vs Leicester Uni Staff 2’s at Leicester Uni playing fields, on ASTRO (gulp)
Leicester Uni Staff have no ground-staff at present due to them all being furloughed, so I was offered the option of playing on the correct date at the correct ground but on Astro OR @ Western Park on a Sunday.
Having played at Western Park before I figured we would be better off avoiding the dog turds and instead put all our bad knees to the test on the Astro.
The weather was poor with a drizzle in the air and the Astro had not been covered all year. It was soaking wet and looked as slippery as an Instagram stars Dubai work history as I called tails and lost, luckily Hari the Uni Staff’s skip wanted to bat first (I had wanted to bowl to see what sort of score could be gained on the Astro so was very happy with that).
We took to the pitch in our trainers as had been requested, the batsmen walked out in spikes, I could see how this game was going…
To say it was difficult bowling was an understatement, and true to form Uni Staff were not playing themselves in, my first ball went for 4 and 2 balls later I went back over my head for 6. My first over went for 14… Great. Mark then showed me the way by bowling a maiden at the other end and I tried to put the slippery surface out of my head and not jump into my delivery as normal to save my knees and not slide too much.
2nd over was a lot better, I went for 4 but bowled the lad smashing it everywhere, knocking his leg stump back.
Things calmed down for a few overs then with me and mark going for the odd run and tight wide. Mark then hit their other opener on the foot in front of middle and we all went up, unfortunately the umpire didn’t join in, but it didn't matter as, Mark got his own back though with a superb yorker that missed the foot and smashed the stumps, well in mate!
Mark bowled his 10 straight through and finished with 37/1, good figures considering the Astro, I bowled 7 and then took myself off to see if Jimmy could get some bounce out of the wet mat and Raz came on at Marks end.
Jimmy bowled brilliantly to end with 31/2 off his 10. He never gave the batsman any release shots and was unlucky to only end up with the 2 wickets, going at 3 an over on Astro throughout his whole spell, cracking work . Raz, bowling for the first league game in 2 years was quite simply amazing, he bowled 7 overs for 8 runs and 5 wickets! Out of the 8 runs 4 were wides so only 4 runs off the bat in 7 overs and 5 wickets. Fantastic job and got him the man of the match award.
Some top fielding from the rest of the lads again all the way through this game, Terry taking an absolute stormer at point for one of Raz’s wickets and Archie playing as keeper for us for the first time in a few years took 3 catches, he looked like he kept every week, brilliant Archie 😊
Me and Bobby finished off the overs for no more wickets and Adam ran out the last bat going for a crazy 2 to leave Uni Staff on 140 off 30.2 – On the Astro and with their aggressive batting I would have taken that all day at the start, cracking work from everyone in the field.
Onto the batting and as usual our openers continued their great start to the season, either Sam or Adam have scored a 50 in every game so far. Before the game we discussed not getting stuck behind the rate due to the rain and we started quickly, unfortunately so did the rain and off we went at 4.29 pm for 26 mins. After some calculations me and Harry worked out that we had lost 8 overs and the score needed for the win was now 123 off 32. Luckily Yakesh can actually do maths though and he came running out to me (I was umpiring with Mark) to let me know it should have been 113 for the win, thanks Yaks 😊
We got to 46 off 9 before Sam fell trying to launch Jean de beer for 6, with both Sam and Adam looking fine now Adam had ordered his lid (the lad at the far end was pretty rapid and bowling bouncers constantly). Out came Archie to Join Adam but he was bowled quite quickly for 1 and in came Bobby. Adam carried on with his destructive innings, bringing up his 50 with a massive 6 and pointing his bat to the Leicester Uni player’s as he celebrated (it had become that kind of match…).
Adam eventually fell for 63 bringing Terry to the crease and him and Bobby knocked the last few off to leave us winners on 113/3 off 17.2 – Not bad against 4th place and left us top after 5 games, well done all.
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