1st Team vs St Cross Symondians CC, 2nd XI

Two hundreds and fourth five days previous, we walked off a rain drenched Hayling Island knowing that our next walk to the middle would be in the Southern Premier League. Those 245 days were clearly not enough time for Daryl to pack his whites, as for the first time (and I fear not the last), the kitbag of Ryan Norman was raided, ensuring our vice skipper wasn’t playing his first SPL game in his tighty whiteys.

Welcoming St Cross 2s to the home of cricket, Skip won the toss and elected to field. FWCC started with 2 wickets in the first 4 overs, and restricting St Cross to 85-3 from 31 overs before the rain came. Efforts from Maccers, Munnings and Stammas got the outfield back to a playable state with minutes to spare, knowing that the St Cross score would be adjusted, resulting in a 20 over chase. Battling a wet ball, stiffness, several soaking wet layers and multiple plates of scones and sandwiches from a superb tea (which was initially in question was Regs turned up 25 minutes late with his own Tesco meal deal), the bowlers kept St Cross to 237, with Freddie Pittaway the standout bowler, returning 3-43.

Duckworth Lewis meant that the revised target of 147 off 20 was in our sights for our first win. A solid start from Stevo and Regs set the tone in the power play before we lost Regs, and then Munno (who I assume was checking out the cloud formation mid shot) in quick succession. However, an unbeaten and frankly superb partnership of 109 between Stevo (78*) and Lex (41*) saw us reach the target with 4 overs to spare. Special thanks to the bowling unit throughout the batting display, adopting the ‘right for runs’ theory and continuously walking laps until the job was done.

A fantastic, 11 player effort to get our first win in the SPL. Thanks also to Mike Harvey for scoring and Kelly, who’s lunch almost derailed the second part of our bowling innings!