ELKS (Ilkeston, 22/4/07)
Posted Sunday, April 22, 2007
E-mail this page 
Printer-friendly page
The first game of the season - and it showed! After a fairly dry and warm spell for a couple of weeks prior to the game, it clouded over and was a little chilly when just standing about. However, not many of us were just standing about whils fielding. With a long boundary and a ball that was possibly radio-controlled, just about everyone had some chasing to do. The ball seemed to roll just slow enough to make you think you were in with a chance of catching it but inevitably trickled over the boundary a couple of seconds before you reached it! Except when the fast and fit Michael Wenn was chasing - who managed to pounce on one lusty blow a few feet inside the boundary. They ran 3 and then took another six for the throw. The ground seemed a long way down for most of us and on more than one occasion the ball changed direction just before reaching Sunseeker's hand (I suspect that it was less to do with clever radio control and more to do with the bumpy ground!!). The other fielding highlight was probably young Brian hanging on to a catch, mindful of what happened on the Oxford tour, he avoided doing his impression of that dog that sells insurance and just got on with the business of hanging on to it this time.
They ran 3 and then took another six for the throw.
Ross opened the bowling but never quite settled into his line and length, it was Freddy who made the first breakthrough, some late movement beat the bat and sent the stumps cartwheeling (well OK, they moved a bit and a bale fell off). The Elks batsmen looked solid, although Moggie, Matty, the Daves and Fred slowly winkled them out. But not before they had reached a decent total of 180.
We got of to a good start - the openers survived the first ball. From then on, there was a steady flow of wickets, but not the runs to accompany them. For most of the first 20 overs, the extras kept pace with the batsmen. Only Robin and Wenny made it into double figures. I am sure that there were some entertaining moments during the batting but I can't recall them at the moment. We were all out for 85 I think it was, beaten by about 100 runs. Ah well ...
