Monday, March 22, 2010

Rolled in the Mud at Melville

While we were never expecting a green seamer at Melville, the soft rolled mud we turned up to was not in the play-script either. The groundman had obviously heavily watered and rolled the pitch, then stuck on the covers on the Friday evening, bizarre.
With only 8 players at 10.30 Reg had no choice but to bat when we won the toss, though in hindsight bowling with 8 on that deck wouldn't have been a mistake. The ball spat off a length, stopped, seamed and did all sorts. None of the Melville bowlers would have topped 100kmh but they didn't need to. JB and Rohit didn't last long, before Commins and Reg put on a good 50 runs for the third, with Reg (48) carving to all parts. Unfortunately when Cummo left, the obligitory collapse started. From about 90/4 to 155 all out, and this included a brisk 40 from Stu P in his comeback for the A's. It wasn't helped by Shabir who was not out at lunch, got pulled over by a cop on his way to pick up the 11th player and failed to make it back in time to get timed out.
We thought we still had a chance, but the mud had dried and it was just a low (very low) slow pitch - which Melville had been batting on all season. We had suffered some dubious umpiring last time we played them, and this continued with two shockers not given out LBW, and Reg bowling one of them with a full bunger, only for the square leg umpire to call no ball, when it was no where near waist height. They got to 156/6 and looking at a comfortable lead before we took 3/1 to have them 157/9. This should have been wrapped up, but again a last wicket partnership cost us with them putting on 60 to be 215 all out.
There were still 16 overs left in a very slow day, however they advised that since it was 5.30 we couldn't start a new innings. A strange decision, and one that Reg quickly agreed to to end a strange day's cricket.

1 Comments:

At 6:58 pm, Blogger Mark Donnelly said...

Well, nice work on the headline at least. Good punnage.

 

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