Loughton South cc v Basildon & Pitsea 5th XI

 13/05/2023 - Played on Pitch No.3 at Wickford Memorial Park

I'd looked at the oppositions batting stats on Playcricket and had seen that their batters had reasonable averages and the blokes listed as being 3rd XI players had 50's and 100's to their names unlike us, so it was definitely a game we needed to bowl first in otherwise we'd be heading home at about 2.30!

The weather leading up to the game all week was poor - rain, thunderstorms, cold, grey and no sunshine - awful weather. Then on Friday the weather indicated that on the day of the match, by around 11.00hrs it was going to start to brighten up and by 4pm it would be around 21 degrees and sunny.

As usual the team changed from that posted originally and as usual we looked to be short on batting and might struggle. I had a look on Playcricket at their 3rd XI team and noted that it potentially had some strong batting. With this knowledge my feelings were that whatever the toss revealed we needed to bowl first otherwise there might be a good chance that we'd be rolled over for a handful of runs and their openers would wrap up the game and it would all be over by about 2.30pm!

Thankfully having arrived late because of traffic jams on the M25, the toss happened on a soggy looking wicket under leaden skies. They won and chose to bat. 

The weather wasn't shaping up either - cold damp easterly off the north sea with no sign of the promised sunshine. The outfield needed a cut. About 2 weeks ago by the look of it and more recently! As well as being long enough to hide a small boy in there was all the cut grass sitting on top of it so anything along the ground wasn't going to get to the boundary.

The wicket looking towards the River End

Left to right sorting the stumps. Nishant Khare. Paul McKeon, Lee Thompson and the captain Paul McKeon.

The captains at the toss

P'Mac, our captain is shaping up well and I'm liking what I'm seeing and hearing already. Before we went out he laid down the law with regards anyone struggling with their bowling. He's said that the team encourages and celebrates the successes and what they don't do is shout 'Line and length mate... line and length' and other such cliche's, as he said 'No bowler is intentionally bowling wides, no balls or feeding the batter balls that he can hit for 4's and 6's, when they get it wrong, they know they've got it wrong and the last thing they need is you emphasising the fact in the field'. I hope that's how it's going to be the whole season.

Paul opened the bowling from Pavilion end accompanied by youth player Henry in his 2nd league game bowling from the river end. They got off to a really decent start...

This was Henry's first league wickets so he did very well, bowling out his full allocation of overs with 33 for 3 off 8 overs. Paul was misery for his 2 wickets 11 for 2 off of 6 overs. The ground fielding all round was pretty good apart from the catching. We definitely need to work on our catching. Paul got Chris Mitchell who has an average of 95.4 for last year - all time 77.14 with a high score of 123 and the 10th best bat on their team. Paul got him cheap for 7. 

I bowled from the Pavilion end and Lee bowled from the River end. I bowled at the captain and Rohit Taheem. Taheem was another of their better bats on paper. Last year over 5 innings he scored 170 runs with a high score of 46 with an average of 34. He took to Lee's bowling and scored a number of 2's and one of the only 4's in the game. He couldn't do anything with my bowling which was pretty accurate for the most part (Flippers) and a couple of nice Leg-Breaks that only just missed the edge of the bat. He eventually smacked the ball back at me hard and I caught it. He looked as though he couldn't believe it. Somewhere in my spell someone hit one straight at Lee at Mid-On and it bobbled out of his hand and went to ground and then shortly after the captain Andrew Shields trying to cut me, top-edged to Mitchell Robinson the keeper for him to catch and then drop. So, perhaps I should have been walking away with 3 wickets! Oh well - can't moan too much as I dropped one later in the field. 

Kirby Jennings a female youth player (15)? and new bloke Rajesh Podapala bowled at the a kid that came out at No.9 Aarush Rout. He played really well, see this link here for his wagon wheel he looked amazing calm and collected and was making runs all around the wicket albeit predominantly leg-side. I figured him out as one of his strongest and most consistent shots was through forward square leg so I moved into that position and sure enough he hit a good shot off of Kirby's bowling and it came straight at me at head height and I thought I'd got it - but it bobbled out as I didn't have soft enough hands and he got away with it. Rout went on to score 18 runs not out and being the highest scoring bat on their team. He's an under 15's players and last year he played in 21 innings, scored 138 runs with a high score of 35 and averaged 12.5. How he differed from the rest of the team was that he trusted his technique and he came down the wicket and hit the ball on the full cleanly - I stood there wondering why he was so far down the order. But, we hadn't seen the last Rout.

Having looked at the stats before the game I was happy to have finished with them having scored 114. But I knew that given how much they'd struggled, it wasn't going to be a walk in the park for us. 

The openers were Addis and Rout and they cut through us like a hot knife through butter. Top scoring Rout backed up his batting performance with an amazing bowling performance below... 8-4-7-4 with 2 double wicket maidens.

Some of our bats said he bowled straight and wasn't turning it, but from where I was sitting his whole bowling action looked like a Wrist-spinners and then later I think Paul McKeon senior said he was bowling Leg-Breaks. Our batting was dismal in comparison with the oppositions and it wasn't till Kirby Jennings and the captain came together around about the 20th over that we got the run rate over 1 an over! Kirby eventually top-scored with 10 being caught in the slips with a good effort from the fielder there leaving me not out for 0. The captain scored 2nd highest run along with Mitchell Robinson with 8. We were all out for 45 as I suspected we would be. Thank God we bowled first.

Despite the loss, it was another good game played in the right spirit and the captain said that I should be playing for Essex over 60's as I had the right kind of attitude to the game and was a good bowler and player, which was nice to hear. 

As yet I haven't got to know Pmac well enough to know whether he'd be bothered with me making notes on the field in between overs like I have done over the years under different captains. So the wagon wheels here are from memory and from talking to the batters themselves and other bowlers and players...

Andrew Shields No.3________________

Shields was the captain for this match and will be captain for the season as far as I can make out. His data over the last 10 years...

Looked like a solid batsman with a good range of shots around the wicket. Deft late cut, but we had a bloke there that cut that off. A flick off the legs to fine leg was another preferred shot, but generally the sense I got was that he had the ability to hit the ball where he wanted to potentially, but our field we set for him, which was pretty standard worked well. One of his main shots is the cover drive which he hit plenty of, but with the conditions -  virtually 100% of these were simply fielded. Another shot seen quite a bit was a late cut. 

 Our field made use of the conditions and we had everyone on the edge of the circle as such, but this was primarily due to the fact that the grass was so long and covered with cuttings, the ball wasn't going to be going for fours much at all. Given a dryer day with a fast outfield he'd have been far more of a handful. 

We got wickets early and we may have got their 2 best bats cheap and this may have affected Shield's approach. He was very watchful and seemingly un-phased by the very low run rate (1 an over for the first 20 overs as I recall). He was dropped a few times - drive through Mid off (Off my bowling). Cut shot attempt through point top-edged and dropped by our keeper (Off my bowling) and dropped at Gully. Not a candidate for stumpings, didn't come out of his crease as far as I noticed. If you're a Wrist-Spinner with a straight variation and the wicket allows for the ball to turn well, an approach you might find useful is to bowl on a good length given the conditions you have and set him up with straight balls. Balls on a good length he tends to defend with a straight bat, so then bring in the small Leg-Break and the edge might be found? 

He was eventually trapped LBW sweeping Kirby Jennings (Slow Left arm orthodox). 

Aarush Rout No.9 _______________________

Rout is an under 15's player and plays a lot of cricket. 

Rout came out at Number 9 and right from the on-set looked good. I'd been bowled out so didn't get to bowl at him, but he did say that he was glad that he didn't have to face me and felt that he might have struggled.

He was busy, looking to rotate the strike with Shields and others with an obvious good leg glance into the area between square leg and fine leg, which I quickly cut off and had a tactic for. He then changed it up and went for a more aggressive shot looking to pierce the gap between square leg and mid wicket. Again, I reacted moving from a position of backward of square leg to forward of square leg and almost caught him in that position on the edge of the circle - the ball bobbling out of my hand as it was hit so hard and I didn't have soft hands. 

We tightened up the Leg-side field and stymied his shots through there, but he also had some straight shots and late cuts/cut shots through point and backward point, but the fielders and the state of the grass stopped his efforts through there. 

More so than any of the other players he was confident and skilled enough to come out of his crease and hit the ball on the full and he did this time and time again against Kirby Jennings (SLA). 

He survived all of the bowling we threw at him and came away with the highest score and a not out. I reckon he'll be fun to bowl at and I'm hoping that he continues to bat as he does and works his way up the batting order by the time we visit their ground and I get the chance to bowl at him. Not only is he a good batter he then went on to open the bowling with Leggies... 8-4-7-4. A very impressive young allrounder. 

Rohit Taheem No.4_____________________

Taheem came out during my spell while I was bowling with Henry and Lee Thompson as I recall.

Taheem's batting data here suggests that he's new to the club. 

Taheem scored quickly and looked like he was looking to take the attack to us and upset our work.

Thankfully, I was bowling well and I slowed him down. I had really good support in the field especially from Lee Thompson and some of the balls he'd have hoped to have scored runs off. Lee pulled off some superb stops and kept him at the crease. 

I hardly bowled any Leg-Breaks in this spell - out of the 48 balls perhaps 4? One or two of these to Taheem to try and let him see that it was there as an option. After a beauty that he blocked and only just missed his bat he then pulled out a big shot in the style of a bloke looking to not let the spinner settle and hit the ball straight at me at about 100 mph and I caught it clean - bowled and caught... Nice!

I had a chat with him and he's looking forward to a re-match and reckons he's got my number! Love it, can't wait!

Again as with all the others, the wagon wheels are representational of a game played on long, damp grass. In different conditions it would have been a different story, almost 100%.