Farley Hill (A) – 22.4.12

Farley Hill 157-8
Stewart 4-13, Waqar 2-29, Tranter 2-30

Match abandoned due to rain

In the first game of the 2012 season RUASCC’s senior bowlers grabbed a hatful of wickets before play was eventually abandoned at tea thanks to the wettest drought on record. No one who’d seen a weather forecast expected to complete this game but we started on time and in bright sunshine; Eagle won the toss in his first game as Club Captain and put the home side into bat.

Player of the Season Zia opened the bowling and for the first few overs looked exactly like a man who hadn’t managed to attend any of the net sessions, while Withers took the new ball at the other end seemingly well-rehearsed and already at his disappointing best. After 17 overs the Farley Hill openers had notched a fifty partnership and intermittent heavy showers made fielding conditions both difficult and unpleasant.

In an attempt to force the breakthrough skipper Eagle experimented with the field settings: at one point Tranter was asked to go “slippish” and later in the innings Withers spent a good amount of time in a position between long-on and long-off in a place that shall be referred to henceforth simply as “long”. But despite these innovations several chances went begging as balls were allowed to land in the spaces between fielders with no one really making an effort to get there. We are still RUASCC after all.

What Eagle eventually realised is that a RUASCC wicket is a nailed-on certainty once you take Withers off, and sure enough Waqar’s second delivery was hoiked straight to the captain who took the catch. By the time Zia had rediscovered the art of bowling maidens without taking wickets, he was replaced by Tranter who perhaps has the opposite problem. Eagle called it in Trant’s first over: “ball number four will be a wicket”, and it was, as the batsman went walkabout and Dip completed the stumping.

Opening batsman Ali had scored the bulk of the runs and he was on 64 when Waqar bowled him – an important wicket that exposed the less assured middle order to the twin threat of Tranter and Ken Stewart, playing in his first game since the bungee jumping accident that left him four feet tall and Scottish. Tranter went from the ridiculous (one delivery went backwards) to the sublime (another plumb LBW to add to his collection) to finish with 2-30 and Farley Hill could find no answer to Ken’s left arm ankle-biters. Starved of pace and predictable bounce, the batsmen charged down the wicket and swung at thin air giving Dip two stumpings and Stewart final figures of 4-13, his best since July 1921.

With the fall of the eighth wicket the home side declared, but before the first egg sandwich had been consumed the heavens opened and the downpour proved terminal for the already stodgy pitch. Despite a subsequent spell of bright sunshine there was no chance of further play and we all had to make do with a drink in the bar.

RUASCC Highlight: Chan’s incredible diving stop at square leg.

RUASCC Man of the Match: It hurts, it really hurts, but it has to be Pensioner Ken.

RUASCC Team: Eagle (capt), Dersh, Carpenter, Malde, Gehlot, Dip (wkt), Zia, Waqar, Withers, Tranter, Stewart