It was Heath Park for the game versus the Casuals who always put up good opposition and play the game in a good spirit. The Canes with only 9 players batted first on what appeared a relatively good batting wicket, credit to Cardiff’s parkies this year, they seem to be doing a pretty good job so far. Most of the top order batsmen disagreed as one by one they trudged off with limited scores, being led by example as usual by Captain Griff & his golden duck.
As the casuals pacey Asian dog fearing bowler and chirpy spinner tore through the top and middle order things were looking bleak with the only real limited resistance put up by J.Stagg (20ish?) & Jeffreys (18). Soon the Canes were reduced to 50 odd for 8ish when Danny champion of the world came to the crease partnered by Evans as teh final wicket stand. Now, listen very carefully, i shall say this only once…. what followed was a series of cracking defensive shots that i would have been proud of myself. Danny was doing well and struck a couple of lusty drives through offside then got a bit excited and nibbled at one outside off and got caught by slip(ish) position playing an unusal off side prod. With no players in the hutch Danny was left out there to act as a runner for Jez who was now literally holding the innings together on his own around the 14th over, he then proceeded to play an excquisite array of defensive shots combined with drives down the ground for 4 every now and then before falling with 3 balls left to be bowled trying to spank the bowler back over his head….credit where it’s due, a fine display of proper digging in defensive cricket, a lifetimes work paying dividends some might say….not me, i saw him score fifty & hit a 6 down llanrumney once, allbeit on a small boundary, an artificial wicket & against average bowlers, but it was a fifty none the less!! Anyway, I’ve digressed, that left the Canes on 82 all out off 19.3 overs, a very hard score to defend.
The Casuals opened their batting shakily, thanks to 3 very tight overs from COB and losing early wickets to a clean bowled (or 2?) from J.Stagg, a great catch by Sully in the deep from D.Stagg’s bowling and some sharp keeping to take a fizzing ball into the gloves behind from a rocket like Evans delivery. The defense of the 82 was looking good as the Casuals were roughly 32 for 4 from 8. Unfortunately thats where it all started to go wrong, there were some lusty blows struck of the next 4-6 overs as the Casuals realised they needed to open up, Cob was unlucky not to have one batsmen run out as he was stranded half way down the strip and his bat fortuatously(sp?) hit the ball leaving him adequate time to get home. That seemed to be the key moment when the feeling it wasn’t our day kicked in and from then on there were a couple of misfields, the odd over throw and the unusual site of Bowen dropped his delivery a bit to short allowing the batsmen time to spank it for an enormous 6 that ended up on the road! The Casuals cruised home with 4 or 5 overs to spare.
If any of the above is wrong i’m sorry but I never had the book! The Canes now need to recover quickly following 2 back to back defeats for the first time in 2 or 3 years.
MOM : J Evans – Tight bowling & an outstanding lonely one man stand to finish out innings.
Jaffa
