BOTW Cricket Club

THE FIRST BY SKIPPER OF THE DAY PAUL BLOUNT AND THE SECOND BY DAVINDER FREESTONE

After comfortably rolling over the Champions last week an unchanged 11 demonstrated why we’d not be joining Twycross in the top division next season.

For the third season in a row Malc Hood (can he come out to play yet Christine) managed to convince half of the team to turn up for a one-thirty kick off instead of the regulation two o’clock, when will we learn.

Oddly the pitch with the covers on was soaking wet, so we opted to play on right the edge of the square, which left the boundary just longer than my back garden. Skipper Paul Blount won the toss and stuck our visitors in on what looked like a lively pitch.

Early success for Lee Smith, when he managed to bully one opening bat into falling over his sticks. But our advantage was not driven home as our youngsters Smith and Jeff Aylett fired down a barrage of hostile deliveries.

Broughton held out fairly comfortably, though by drinks they had moved onto 41-1 off of 22 overs.

With Broughton now deciding to get a move on their number three was well caught in the deep by Dave Freestone, you never lose that pace over the first ten yards boys. Unfortunately for us this brought Blockley to the crease, his arrival also encouraged opener D’arujo to start finding the boundary.

Spin twins, Graeme Peck and Rob Dunn were despatched to the boundary a number of times before the quicks were called back into action. Blockley was removed for a quick-fire 40 when he declined to return to his crease and was run out by Gary Moore from behind the stumps. D’arujo was out for 68, most of which came over the short boundary. Some solid hitting in the last few overs, including a big six off Smith into the cornfield, a couple of wickets for Aylett and the Broughton innings came to a close at 187-6.

Now the injury count, Ros Deabill pulled a hamstring, but still managed to take a catch later on. Blount and Smith narrowly avoided a collision as they both went for the same catch, rumoured one of them broke a nail as their hands touched in mid flight, they both claim to have dropped the bloke as well.

The Broughton batsmen came off with a few bruises mainly off Smith, a few rapt fingers and a mighty thud into some geezers back, brought amusement to everyone else.

A so to our reply, a clearly injured Deabill was caught out slogging, yes slogging, in about the third over and it was downhill from there. Moore, Aylett, Freestone & Officer Dibble all offered little resistance as we lost our first five wickets for about 20. Peter Roberts hung around for a little longer before beautifully steering a catch to gully. As the rain came down Dunn took centre stage on his way to a fifty as he managed to pull his calf muscle and smash the wrist of close fielder D’arujo.

With time running out for Broughton, Blount, not for the first time this season was making his way back to the pavilion LBW Umpire Pratt and as Dunn followed shortly after Broughton thought they could wrap up the tail.

Peck, going in at number 9 stonewalled the last few overs, Kev Morley employed a slightly different approach taking an almighty swing to every ball he faced was one way of using up time, but not one that was ever going to last. Smith played out the last over as we finished on 111-9 and called it a draw.

We always win one and lose one against Broughton
They always come over to our place in a mini bus, we have good banter on the field they are the most sociable bunch that we play all season, despite you second team lot stealing 24 points off them.

BOTW won the toss and on a damp wicket chose to put BA into bat. Lee Smith and Jeff Aylett opened the bowling. Lee in particular found a tremendous amount of bounce out of the wicket a preceeded to bowl a precession of head-high (and above) bouncers, in a pretty hostile opening spell. However, he needs to remember, the wickets are about 3 ft lower and he should bowl at them occassionally!!

Despite an early wicket, D'Araujo and Cox, batting 1 and 3 respectively, steadfastly refused to give-away their wicket and took the score on to 58 in the 25 over before Cox was out. With BOTW's two spinners, Graham Peck and Rob Dunn, both struggling with both the bounce in the wicket and the strong wind, BA started to accelerate and put on 130 in the last 20 overs to finish on a creditable 187-6. D'Araujo, who always seems to get 50's against BOTW, made a resiliant 68, ably supported by Blockley with 41. The pick of the BOTW bowlers was Jeff who returned figures of 15-2-51-3.

Following a very good Lee Smith tea (amazing, but true!!) the BOTW response was delivered a fatel blow very early on when Gary Moore and Ross Deabill had both gone by the 5th over with just 4 runs on the board and we slumped to 24-5 in 16 overs. A spirited partnership between Pete Roberts and Rob Dunn put on 37 runs, but the best to be hoped for was 100 runs and just a single batting point. This was made worse when Rob then pulled a hamstring (to match the one Ross pulled ealier!!) and needed a runner...lets hope they're both OK for next Saturday.

Anyway, Rob moved on to make an excellent 51 and the "draw" was eventually played out with BOTW finishing on 111-9 in 45 overs, the last 10 or so played in lovely drizzle. So, BA finished thoroughly bored (apparently) with 20 points and BOTW with just 3 points. After last weeks fine win at Twycross, this was a very disappointing result.

Most of the BA players has arrived on a 'tour bus' and so it was straight to The Greyhound where plenty of drinking was had...the bus was last seen heading off towards Barrow.