Awful bowling

Rain again today and the U13's match not surprisingly has been cancelled, actually it wasn't because of the rain in this instance it was because the opposition couldn't get a team together, so it's to be re-scheduled. It's the same everywhere, my old Tilbury mate Boffa has just posted on his Facebook page "When's this cricket season going to start"? The season for U13's isn't that long anyway as it finishes when the schools break up, so that leaves another 7 or 8 weekends?

Yesterday I played my first game against Old Brentwood CC 3rd XI playing in the 4ths under Lee Dutton as the captain. This was an away game at their ground and very nice it was too. Located quite some way outside of Brentwood, which in itself is a bit up-market, the ground appeared to be one of those multi-use set ups, that attract funding from the Lottery Commission, whereby if the facilities cover use by several sports and in Brentwwods case this looked like - Cricket, Squash, Football, Rugby and Tennis, they're able to attract funding to upgrade their facilities. Other than that their membership fees must be astronomic or they've got some wealthy backers.

 There are two pitches, this one above - directly outside the clubhouse and a second pitch thay we played on which is in the far distance of this shot over to the right. The pitch we played on had an all weather wicket which seemed a bit odd, which meant I had to muck about changing spikes before I left and this caught a few people out that hadn't seen the message on the club website.

 Nice nets, no sign of any vandalising.

Here's a shot of the clubhouse with nets.

Another shot showing the scoreboards this time.

What with our 4ths playing their 3rds it seemed like a foregone conclusion that this might be a little one sided. Their players looked on average younger without having any 13 year olds as we did (Ryan and Mitchell), they seemed to have blokes in the 16-25 year old range and some later twenties, early 30's and then a couple of older blokes. It was such a foregone conclusin that on winning the toss their captain suggested a limited overs match, suggesting that if it was a timed match we might be looking at fielding for a very long time. I think Lee said something along the lines of  'Yeah we'll be looking to bowl you out, it'll be okay' and the bloke shrugged as if to say, go on then, have it your way, we did warn you.

A short while later with no help from me they were all out for 108 or so! Of that 108 I reckon almost 30 of them must have been down to me off of three overs, it was so bad at the end of the third over I was going to say,'Enough is enough - let someone else bowl', but Lee said 'Have a rest'...