With predictions of rain sweeping in at 5pm there were calls for a 20/20 match from back seat captains, but this was quickly ignored. With Captain Shah phoning in his orders to stand-in Dan Cowell, Saltwood won the toss and elected to bat despite Ian’s life long rule of bowling first.
‘Fresh’ from his 55 the previous day, G decided to conserve his energy for the next round of league matches by getting bowled for 0 in the first over and was quickly joined by Tom Carr (0) leaving Saltwood on the verge of an epic collapse at 5-2. Luckily panic did not set in, with Chris Fox (22) and Dan Cowell (30) putting on 45 runs before Foxy was caught behind. A restrained innings by Ian (18) paired with the hitting power of Cowlo and Owen Reed (41) got Saltwood up to 108-5. Winter signing Ali Rahim (9), Shah (13), Tom Leaver (21 no), Arthur Leaver (5) and John Kearns (6 no) combined to get the score up to a par score of 188-9.
Just before Saltwood took the field, Elham captain (Ern Marden) made a presentation to Frank Hobbs who was marking 50 years at Elham Valley CC.
Elham made good progress towards the 189 victory target before the persistent rain called a halt to proceedings with the score at 61-0 off 14.2 overs. No wickets for the Wood bowlers but a number of edges and balls flying past the edge was more that enough practice for next week’s KVL encounter against Detling.
Despite repeated protests from G the match will count towards the end of season stats. With a 0 against his name and 1.2 overs going for 7 runs you can understand why he opposed the decision, but with 18 runs to my name, they are going in.
