Sunday Friendly v Anston St George

 I like these games, players from across all 6 of our teams playing against a similar team (allegedly).

Only 2 1st XI players - Weatherall our International player from Australia - Fast bowler and Lloyd Lambert; Off-spinner.

Travis 2nd XI off-spinner (All-rounder)

Lennon 4th XI wicket keeper/bat

Nishant 6th XI off-spinner/batter

Varun 6th XI bowler (Seam) batter (2nd only game with us)

Me 6th XI No.11 and Spin-bowler

Paul A McKeon - batter

Paul Mckeon seam-up bowler (Opener)

Harry - All-rounder

Pijush - All-rounder

We bowled first against an aggressive/good batter and he looked like he was taking the game away from us right from the outset, but then Harry came on and sorted him out leaving an older geezer (Younger than me) who played in a more considered manner. 

I came on surprisingly early given the situation and the strength of the batters and the fact that the Aussie captain has never seen me bowl. I had a ropey first over where I was hit for a couple of fours through the covers bowling too wide of the off-stump. The Aussie bloke moved a player into the short cover position and that then plugged the gap and the runs dried up.

I then got another wicket caught at slip (The Aussie) Kieran. Two balls earlier he almost took a catch in slips - but only got his fingers to it and dropped it. Two balls later the ball went right at him and with a bit of fumbling as he fell, he kept hold of it. I bowled a couple of relatively tight overs with singles going down to deep mid-on and then was replaced having bowled 6. Because of the earlier 4's I didn't think I'd done that well, but then at the end of the game when I had a look at everyone else's bowling I saw that I hadn't done that bad.

Running total below - Differs from the official figures as the scoring has been shocking with the use of the on-line app thing. The logic seems to be 'It's easy - let some kid so it, they know about technology'. But they don't know about umpire signals and scoring in the first place. 

Another diagram - This time analysis of where I'm getting hit and leaking runs...

https://captaincalculator.com/sports/cricket/bowling-strike-rate-calculator/

B&PCC 6th XI v Westcliff on Sea 6th XI

 18/5/24 - Belfairs park 'North Pitch'. 

This was a win for us by 5 wickets. Again a slightly different team. The core members seem to be Nishant Khare who is now the official captain, Me, Lee Thompson, Akash Kale and Jake Wright. 

The line-up today...

As it was a Friendly the coin wasn't tossed, we wanted to bowl, they wanted to bat, so that's what happened. We didn't get off to a great start, the new captain Nishant said from the outset he was going to get the youngsters into the game early. One of the kids bowled really well and got his reward with a great wicket hitting the top of the stumps taking one of the openers out of the equation. They'd been going at 6+ an over and were racing away. The two kids bowled 4 each and then Lee "Five-fer" Thompson came on bowling his SLA. He struggled initially, but then settled. I came on at the 'Seaside' end bowling 90% flippers with the odd Leg-Break. I took 2 in no-time - possibly in the 1st over? They were youngsters not even having a look - just coming after me as though I was some kind of comedy act. One was caught at Point by Archie Monk, the next was clean bowled with the kid trying to smash me into the River Thames (Its about a mile away) and the last was an adult player "Charls D'Cruz" who hit the 4's; One through cover which was a good shot and the two through deep mid-wicket which were down to me bowling leg-side full tosses - attempting to bowl big turning leg-breaks. Knowing I had to keep away from the leg-side I opted to hang some wide of the off-side as he was flashing at them with little success and the wicket keeper Eoin Mercer is pretty decent and likely to take one if he edged it. I didn't even consider Lee Thompson fielding in slips (5) as being in the game! But then D'Cruz went after one - driving wide of the stumps and Lee did a Dwayne Leverock style dive in the world cup 2007 playing against India and snaffled it. It was a superb catch and probably one of my most memorable - I can only ever recall getting a wicket in slips previously about 10 years ago!

One of the younger kids who'd struggled at the start came on again after the 'Thompson' show (Lee took 1 wicket) and took 3. One of which was as a result of catch by me. I'd been fielding at backward square inside the ring, but having seen the batter intentionally targeting the gap between me and fine leg (Between 6 and 11 below) I moved to a position closer to 11 and outside the ring and within a few balls took the catch. 

The image above is the analysis of where I get hit in the games, this currently is an accumulative version showing what I recall of the three games so far. The catches have been taken at 5, 6 and 10, I've never had so many catches taken off my bowling!

Unfortunately the opposition were scoring on one of those poxy tablets digitally and at the time of writing they'd only posted the final score...

So at the moment I only know that I took 3 wickets and a catch, but have no idea of how many runs I went for. I've sent the details of their bowling and our innings and they photographed it at the end of the game, so there's no reason why the couldn't have copied it up and posted it. I've asked Nishant to chase it up and see if he can get them to rectify the situation and he's said he will. Hopefully the analysis with show up in the next couple of days?

Update, after a lot of faffing Nishant got something together that is an approximation rather than the exact record, but I'll go for it. The details relating to my catch are wrong, I took a wicket off Taylor Millar. My figure 6-1-18-3 which I concur with. 

Other than that, at the end of the games, I'll have to get their scorer to stay behind and read out the details so I can add them to our book. 

Here's our batting. The high-point here is Jake Wright. He also bowled today and got at least one wicket (Details to come apparently). But... look at his batting. This is his 2nd game and he batted recklessly in the first for about 8 runs and was disappointed with himself. It looks like he's learned and he batted really well today scoring 28 not out off of 34 balls and enjoyed it. I reckon with more games he'll get so much better. The only thing is he's just secured a job where he's expected to work Saturdays. 

6th XI v Eastwood 4th XI

 This isn't looking like an easy game either. Last weekend this mob bowled out their oppo for 30 runs, with one bloke who's only played one game for them taking 5-0-4-6 (Hasnain H). Hopefully someone at the club has seen that and moved him up to the 3rd XI or banned him from friendlies? One other geezer (Justin Blenes) who I don't know either, took  2-0-6-3. 

So hopefully our captain will see sense and bowl first so that the bowlers can have a game. I'm not optimistic though as its Mitchell Robinson and he's a batter. 

https://bowlingplans.blogspot.com/2020/01/eastwood-cc-wagon-wheels-and-bowling.html

The only player I recognised from last weeks game is Armitage.

The game...

Lovely sunny day, probably a bit hot given the fact that its only May 11th (25-27 c). The opposition won the toss and decided to bat. I had no idea how that was going to go, but given their performance last week with the ball I was happy that we'd be bowling, meaning that at least 6-7 of us will get a game!

Stumpgate. The game had to be restarted mid-way through the second over after one of our junior players Ali Abbass had just bowled his first ball and taken a wicket with it. The captain Mitchell had put the stumps in before most of us arrived and now mid way through Ali's over noticed that he'd put them in on the popping crease! So, what with it being a friendly we just re-started the game, which was a real shame for the kid Ali. 

Bowling figures above (Note my figures are wrong I didn't take a wicket) One of our new blokes (Lee Thompson) SLA dibbly dobbly, took five wickets, this is his 2nd season! He had the Yips last year, but this year has come back with vengeance. He bowls differently this year, loopier and slower, but seemingly more accurately. 

So we were happy to have restricted them to 89 and felt that we might have a chance. I'd figured out who the bowler was from the previous week and he was a junior player and he'd apparently bowled 'Slow out-swingers'. Some of the other players in the opposition mentioned that the wicket was 'Sticky' inferring that it was favourable conditions for the bowlers, whereas today it was dry bright and sunny. 

With the dry wicket the kid (Hasnan) was ineffective going for 4-0-11-0 and wasn't at all threatening. In the same game he took 6, the other bowler J-Blenes took 3 and similarly Blenes in this game came away with 4-0-20-0. 

Our batsman after losing the opener Mitchell Robinson cheaply took their bowlers to task.

I've not done a good job here on the score-sheet missed credited the bowler Reid with his wicket, although its in the analysis. 

Basildon & Pitsea 6th XI

Front left to Right -  Dave Thompson. Lee Five fer Thompson, Jake Wright, Ali Abbass.

Rear row L to R - Mitchell Robinson, Matt Cruse, Shashank Shekhar, Nishant Khare, Akash Kale and  Asad Abbass. 

Pitch for this match (The un-numbered pitch "The sewage farm pitch).

B&PCC v Newham cc 4th May

 Don't know If I'll be to keep this up, but I'll give it a go, I'll try and keep it short.

Home game (Friendly) for the 6th XI. This is quite historic for the club as its the first season that it looks like we're going to get 6 teams out on a regular basis. I captained one game last year and that was the first ever 6th XI. The club is going from strength to strength. 

The game was played on ground 1 on the image above, normally we'd play on one of the other 2. Today the 5th XI were on ground 2. 

Previous few days it had been raining and this year has been ridiculously wet. It had rained all day yesterday from first light to about 4pm. But today the sun came out and there was a bit of a breeze. Time we got there it was OK, but a bit soggy.

I'd checked out the form of the opposition and some of the batters in the games last year had strike rates of around 100! So my thoughts were that we needed to bowl otherwise we ran the risk of being skittled for 30 or 40.

A lot of the players in this team I've never played with before

Just home from the Saturday game, I haven't got the exact scores yet as they did them one of those bloody tablet things rather than doing it properly. But Ball park I reckon I was 8-1-22-2. Bowled a few Leg-Breaks today and they came out well, one resulted in a catch at square leg. I must have bowled 6-7 Leg-breaks of the 48 balls, all the others Flippers.

 I batted long today too. The oppo we suspected was quite strong and I was happy when we fielded first - everyone at least got a bowl and we restricted then to 120 odd, They then turned us over 9 for 50 and I strolled out and joined the captain for the 10th wicket partnership and we put on a another 50 + and fell 19 short with 9 overs in hand. My fault played a more aggressive shot outside of the off-stump and it caught the inside edge and went on to the stumps. Retrospectively I look back at that and think - 9 overs left - 2 an over even I didn't score anymore runs the captain may have got those on his own. The oppo were running around like they'd just won the world cup whooping and jumping up and down like crazy! To be fair they could see the game slipping from their grasp and they were trying everyone and everything. 

A couple of days later when they'd posted the scores on the playcricket website, the opposition with their dumb digital scoring got it completely wrong with regards our bowling

On-line I was credited with an extra wicket, but take that out of the equation and I've started the season with 8-1-19-2 which I'm happy with. Actually I've just checked and it looks like they've rectified the score book...

Check out Adam Walker 4 overs for 0. I think Taylor Millar with 2 has been credited with one of Jakes wickets? I'm not sure though.