Second match of the second half of the season brought Glynde to 5-Ashes. Hoping to complete the double over them, we were fielding a reasonably strong team on paper, however disaster struck before the oppo had even arrived when sever back spasms (á la Oli Robinson) took Eates out of the game all together.

Some might see that as a positive, this author does not! and we were fortunate to be able to call upon Simon Chapman at very late notice as back up. For once we won the toss and put the oppo in hoping to restrict them to a gettable total.

The returning Vosloo very much had change on his agenda & rightly so, as we have been on a poor run of form. With Einstein’s famous quote in our minds we opened with Jack Jervis & Sam Williams, playing his first game for MCC for more than 3 years.

It didn’t take long for Williams to strike, bowling the younger of their two openers with just 12 on the board. Unfortunately this didn’t bring the ensuing success we hoped as the 2nd wicket partnership took them past drinks with a near 100 partnership.

Beecroft & Treherne were unable to make a breakthrough so D. Vosloo opted for Vosloo Jr & Stillwell to try and break this annoying partnership. Finally Jake broke it, bowling the more dangerous of the two first and the 2nd of them as well, both of them just shy of their 50’s with the score on 115-3.

A mini collapse ensued with Vosloo taking a superb 6-39 off his 9 overs. Leaving Glynde floundering a bit on 159-8. Cooke & J Hughes chipped in with a wicket each & a run out ended the innings after 36.5 overs with Glynde posting a VERY chaseable 171.

After tea another change by the skip saw Dan Beecroft & Jason Wickham open the batting. Our top order have really not delivered the starts we need, over the past few weeks so a change was welcomed and we had hope that mixing it up a bit would give us the good start we all hoped for and needed.

It looked like Vosloo’s tactics were paying off as we reached 34 without loss relatively quickly, with some running between the wickets as well, something we haven’t managed for a number of games but the good news ended there with a monumental collapse leaving us reeling on 77-6 at drinks. Some very good bowling by the opposition’s very young attack, coupled with some awful shots straight to hands and a ludicrous run out meant we required just under 100 with 4 wickets in hand.

An exciting partnership by Hughes and Jack Jervis really gave us hope as they added 40 runs to take us up to 117 before Jervis was caught and a couple of balls later Hughes’s middle stump was despatched by an almost unplayable in-swinging yorker leaving us on 117-8.

An excellent 16 from Sam Williams down the order gave us renewed hope including a monster 6 over the trees but his support dwindled quickly as Vosloo Sr was caught off a leading edge and Vosloo Jr caught at backward point having added 8 between them.

Once again the damage had been done at the top of the order, we really can’t keep relying on tail enders to get us over the line.

So positives:
An exciting return of Sam Williams who bowled well & batted nicely.
A magnificent display of spin bowling by Jake Vosloo finishing with man of the match figures of 9-1-38-6.
Maximum fielding points having got all 10 wickets within 37 overs.
This may be a little desperate but our next two games are against the bottom & second to bottom clubs so we need to up our game!

Luckily results elsewhere did go in our favour plus a high scoring losing game meant we not only retained our position of 5th in the league we actually consolidated it. Other results also meant that the teams above us didn’t pull away too much so we are not out of it yet & a top 3 finish is plausible IF we can establish a stronger foundation at the top order when we bat.

We are a team who win & lose together without apportioning blame. We have a daring Capt willing to make changes to try to make a difference. We all need to step up and make sure we take 60 points from our next two games. I for one think we are more than capable of achieving this.

Fred Eates (Excuse-maker-In-Chief)