More Cricket

Another Saturday, another game. Home to Potter Street, who are a good three divisions below us (the league starts next week), and in the end it showed. After a fast start, we collapsed somewhat at the end and were disappointed to finish with only 212. I'd scored five when their medium-pacer sent down a juicy long-hop - I rocked back to pull it, but the ball hardly got off the floor and I ended up stretching and gently looping it to extra-cover. Annoying - I always seem to get to balls that keep low, particularly when playing at home. We were playing league rules i.e. 45 overs a side, but they took an absolute age to get through theirs - by the time we had tea and went out to field, it was already well past 5:30. Good job we bowled them out for under a hundred, or we'd have been playing in the dark.

Three things I observed about the different standards of the sides. Most glaring and yet least decisive was the fast bowlers - we've got two genuine quickies, they only really had one seamer who got anything above gentle medium. The nature of the pitch meant that this gave them an advantage if anything - their openers used the pace to score well. The second difference was the depth of batting - we bat all the way down to about nine, they were into the youngsters and shufflers at six. The key difference was the fielding - now we're a very old side (at 35, I was the third youngest yesterday), but we're all competent fielders and we don't generally spill catches, and the only one we grassed yesterday was a sharp caught-and-bowled chance - in contrast, they put down several fairly regulation catches. Took one myself at deep mid-on.

Didn't bowl today, but after last week, I don't really care. For the first time in a long time, I'm actually enjoying the fielding now.