KCCII v Chipping Norton II

On an overcast day away at Chippy skipper Oliver Hoped he would follow the recent trend and lose the toss so not to have to make a decision , unfortunately for Oliver he called heads and indeed that's what it landed on..... so in true captaincy fashion Oliver went against the majority and decided to bat!. With the ones not having a game the twos had on paper a very strong batting line up and the skipper had faith we could set a total to bowl at.
Oliver and Walker opened up with Walker finding the boundary with ease they set a decent opening stand of 67 before Oliver missed a straight one. woods was now at the crease and within a few overs walker had brought up his 50 and was looking to go on, unfortunately this was not to be and he holed out going for another big shot , with another vital partnership of 30 walker was out for 53.
woods was joined by kalyan and the two looked at ease and picked up singles nicely rotating the strike nicely and keeping the scoreboard going up and at the end of the 34th over we were sitting nicely at 200 for 2 and murmurs on the side-line were talking of a big total. Then the unthinkable happened and Tomkins who had bowled 6 overs of what can only be described as flighty overs had gone for 24 without picking up a wicket however he then struck with the wicket of woods who was caught for a fine innings of 55 and a very good 103 partnership with kalyan .
in the same over he was to pick up his second wicket with Dogar departing for 2 , the following over Coombs picked up the fist of his two wickets having kalyan adjudged LBW , Sahil had built a great innings and was unlucky not to go on but what proved to be a valuable 40 runs. In Tomkins next over he picked up afurther two scalps with both Jeacock and Blackford being bowled for ducks. now with plenty of overs left the skipper told the ingoing bats to bat the overs .. tippet was next to go being ran out without facing a ball going for a 2nd run that even the most spritely of players wouldn't have made.
Graham was still trying to get his pads on at this stage and eventually got to the middle only to get a first ball LBW to a full toss outside the off stump.. we now had the two youngsters of Oliver and Ramzan at the crease and the best part of 8 overs still left.
Oliver got off the mark with a lovely cut for a single. but was unfortunately Caught in the next over to a great catch off of Tomkins bowling with him ending with figures of 9-1-27-5 from 6-0-24-0 ..an impressive haul in anyone's books and the most impressive collapse ive ever seen from 200-2 to 206 all out takes some doing.
so we had tea and started to think about fielding , which was hard to do with everyone still in shock from the epic collapse.

Ramzan took the bottom end and started his superb spell with a maiden , with tippet opening up from the pavilion end also bowling very well , both bowling tight lines and giving the batsmen nothing, Cannard was the aggressor of the openers looking to hit the bad ball and got off to a reasonable start at 32 without loss inside the first 10, Oliver got his counting wrong (who'd have thought counting to six would be so difficult) and took ramzan off an over before he needed to with a top opening spell of 5 overs for 7 runs.
Graham replaced Ramzan and started off nicely, with tippet making the breakthrough in what can only be described as a poor delivery a full toss that the batsman looped straight up giving Tipper an easy caught and Bowled. Graham then pickup up his only wicket in the 20th over Bowling wallington having just changed ends. jeacock and graham continued where the openers had left off and bowled very will with jeacock picking up 3 wickets from his 8 overs and only going for 21, we managed on the whole to field very well with Chis Graham taking a blinding match winning catch having just dropped Bradford with what appeared to be a dolly just as he started top open his sholders, however it didn't prove costly as Bradford gave him a second chance with a thundering lofted cover drive which Graham took the sting out of with the first effort and kept hold of with his second attempt and the match looked like it was slipping from Chippys Grasp... Sahil replaced graham from the pavilion end with graham finishing with 9-2-34-1, and ramzan returned from the far end , sahil bowled very well for his 4 overs only going for 17 and picking up one wicket , Oliver came on to replace him bowling the Obligatory captains overs and causing a few sore hands and shins in the field from a few overpitched balls (sorry Jacob) however it was Young Ramzan who was the star of his final spell and he picked up the final 3 wickets finishing with 9.3-2-23-3 with a very mature spell meaning the home side fell short by just over 50 runs in the 43rd over

thanks again to everyone who played , a thoroughly enjoyable game and im sure our team will look a little different when we face CNCCII in two weeks time in our home fixture.