Twoo's Learn Plenty of Lessons for Next Season

The Wrecclesham Twoo's fell to earth in the last game of the season with a 67 run defeat to Division VI leaders Shalford.

Shalford won the toss (which was pointless because they wanted to bat first and Wrecclesham always want to bat second) and surprising chose to bat first. Admittedly the match did not get off to a good start. Peter 'Snitty' Richardson and Matt Spooner were late, causing the team to go out with only 10 players. When Snitty arrived, Tony Boniface substituted himself off, meaning that the players were unsure who the captain was.

Nevertheless, the opening bowlers of Hayden 'Sulkier than a professor from the University of Sulk in Sulkville, the capital of Sulkiland' Newman and Steve Houghton did give the opening batsmen some surprises. Hayden caused A. Taylor to sky a ball into the air, but Peter O’Sullivan shamefully dropped it. The openers then pressed on, putting on a partnership of 59 before the fall of the first wicket.

The breakthrough came in James 'Parky's Clone' Merryweather second over, a wicket maiden, when Alex ‘Medicine’ Hall caught W. Torrey behind. Shalford still pressed on and in James' last over of his spell he bowled A. Taylor, who scored 57 after being dropped on 0, leaving James with figures of 6 - 1 - 19 - 2.


At this stage of the match, wickets fell regularly, but the runs continued to be piled on. In particular by R. 'Too Cool for this Division' Crawford who smashed 56 not out, including a six that could have been reported for child abuse, almost hitting a kid in the tennis court!

This dominance of the bat was either a cause or effect of the lethargy felt in the field. Next season, the Twoo's will have to concentrate more. Too many fielders chose to put their hands in their pockets and simply stand on the spot rather than support the bowler and walk in for every delivery.

Peter Richardson and Leo Carter were brought on to limit the damage and both responded incredibly well. Furthermore, Leo was part of a successful tag-team with Alex Hall who stumped P. Smith and caught R. Barry to help Leo with his two wickets. Snitty helped mop up some of the tail with Mitch Brown sending four batmen to the Wrecclesham Pavilion with only scores in the single digits. Mitch took his three wickets in his last 2 overs giving him figures of 8 - 1 - 30 -3. The last of these wickets was achieved by a spectacular catch from Matt Spooner who made the whole field where the real Matt had been all season!

Shalford declared in the 42nd over after R. Crawford had brought the total up to 199 for 8, giving Wrecclesham 48 overs to chase 200.

After a particularly fine tea, the Twoo’s, with a sense of continuity, came out to bat with last week's opening partnership of Bernie 'Golden Shot' Bridger and James Merryweather. However, the incredibly fast bowling of C. Dippenaar proved to be too much and he sent back James, Mitch and Hayden back to the changing room in quick succession.

Alex 'TW20' Hall came in at number 5 to steady the ship with Bernie. Instead of doing this cautiously, he did what he does best (other than play poker) and used his bat to punish any bad ball offered to him by the Shalford bowlers. This caused much consternation in the Shalford side who weren't above giving a few well-judged (though not particularly rude) comments to Alex. Nevertheless, he and Bernie took the score from 36 for 3 off 10 overs to 100 in 25 overs and were looking like taking the match away from Shalford.

Unfortunately, the fantastic partnership came to end when R. Barry caught Alex off the extremely accurate bowling of N. Birchall. Play was interrupted for quite a while because shamefully, no one in the Wrecclesham side wanted to replace Leo as umpire. One this was done, play got under way and Bernie pushed on, but with the other Wrecclesham batsmen falling all around him, the run-rate rapidly subsided and Bernie soon joined them after scoring a fine half-century.

Of all the bowlers, it was N. Birchall who played the most havoc with the Twoo's batsmen. He ended with figures of 9-6-6-4 and was well supported by the other Shalford bowlers. The difference between the Twoo's batsmen and the Shalfordian bowlers was shown by the fact that four Twoo's batsmen were out for a duck.

When the last wicket fell in the 46th over (two overs short), with Steve Houghton the last man standing, victory was Shalford's, as they collected 10 well-deserved points and left Wrecclesham Twoo's with a lot of lessons to learn for next season.

Written by the Ginger Owl