Day Full of Surprises for Twoo's!

Wrecclesham played host to Milford on Saturday on a day where cricket was not expected to be played.

Milford called Wrecclesham two hours before the match to confirm whether there would actually be any cricket! According to reports, the rain was non-stop in Milford. However, in Wrecclesham, it never amounted to more than a few drops. Play went ahead, as planned at 2pm. Strangely enough, numbers were very thin on the ground for both teams. Milford travelled down with 8 players, one more to follow. Furthermore, Wrecclesham started with 9 players, James 'Very' Merryweather and Dave 'Boom Boom' Basey were not present. Stephen 'Unrelated to the Great Ray' Houghton joined after two overs and Andy 'Podge' Partridge arrived a while later.

Two overs were played before rain briefly interrupted play. However, Milford took full advantage of it. They scored 20 runs in a boundary-strewn session. Mitch 'Golden' Brown was getting no luck coming down from the Pottery End (that's right, I'm calling it the 'Pottery End', the Farnham Pottery [central in the Wrecclesham CC's emblem] is the other side of the Wrecclesham Road, behind the Rec, it sounds better than 'Football End', if you don't like, please send your views to doIlooklikeIcare@giveadamn.com) and Scott Newman wasn't faring any better from the Railway End.

After a seven minute interruption, play resumed. Stephen Houghton and Podge returned to plug the holes in the field. Podge fielded exceptionally well, making his lack of presence at the start more apparent. Once he came on to the field, no runs were scored through the covers. In addition, Steve was proving to be a form of human wall, showing the young bucks how it was supposed to be done. The opening partnership came to a surprising end when the fast-scoring Matt Andrews was run out by Dave Richardson smashing the ball right back at the bowler, only for Hayden 'He's a' Newman to get a touch on it diverting it onto the stumps.

From then on, the runs kept flowing, especially through a leaky field. Peter O'Sullivan, certainly not the paradigm of fielding, had an even worse day than usual. One possible catch didn't materialise when he lost a yard because he chatted to the umpire and one catch was dropped when the ball went though his hands, causing him to bizarrely chest it down. All this was surpassed when he partially dived forward to stop the ball. He failed and had to keep running to maintain momentum to prevent himself from falling over. All he achieved was a barrel of laughs and the well deserved nickname 'Coco the Clown'.

Thankfully, Leo J. Carter bowled as accurately as ever, taking three wickets in quick succession making up for Coco's mishaps. One Milford player remarked that if Leo bowled from the start, Milford would not have made 100. In the end, they made 135 all out off 33 overs. The penultimate over was bowled by Matt 'Home' James, it was maiden, indicating that more surprises were in the air.

Mitch 'Golden' Brown and Barry 'That's Mr. Treasurer to you' Croucher came out to bat, with no more than a light drizzle in the air. Cris Ricketts and Simon Whitmore bowled incredibly accurately and had Mitch 'Golden' Brown caught for 2 in very little time. Barry stuck with it and ended up having 5 partners before being sent back to the pavilion for 24. Mitch, Hayden, Scott, Leo and Ryan 'Charlie' Brown all kept him company raising the score to an unremarkable 68 for 6.

Wrecclesham would need to pull off a fantastic batting display or somehow see out a marathon 55 overs to take away points from the match. Matty 'Home' James, the youngest player in the team, playing wonderfully well to take the score up to 112. He stuck around for long time, partnering both Barry Croucher and Steve Houghton. In both instances, he was the leading run scorer. He kept out the good balls and punished the bad ones. His score of 37 was more than seven other Wrecclesham batter's scores combined!

Unfortunately, the run rate required climbed and climbed. When Matt departed, to applause all round, Wrecclesham needed to survive only 3 more overs to get points from the match. Stephen Houghton and Peter 'Coco' O'Sullivan did what they do best and Wrecclesham come away with 2 points, and Milford with 5 points.