With the opposition captain once again calling wrong, we won the toss and decided to change things up and bowl first. Unfortunately, MUCC got off to a bit of a flyer, and we leaked a few too many runs. During the initial period, Tombstone and Kinga chimed in with a couple of wickets, so not all was lost. Stu Rankin came on and began to curve the ball nicely in the air which restricting the flow of runs for a while. With the skipper bowling floaters at the other end, a couple of wickets fell, and we looked like we might have been able to restrict them to 200, especially after Stu and Kinga combined to run their top scorer out. However, they came out swinging at the end and even though Rory was able to claim two scalps in 4 overs, they ended up at 8/250 off 40 overs.
Special mention should be made of Dom’s keeping – with Huggy enjoying the sunny climes of Shepparton, Dom stood up and took over the keeping duties. Although receiving a baptism of fire having to keep to Super first-up, he worked his way into the game, and kept really solidly to the swinging deliveries of Stu, and particularly well to the spinners, snaring a caught behind off the last ball of the day from Rory.
250 is a par score on Rees, so we went to tea thinking we had at least some chance of chasing down MUCC’s score. However, a couple of early wickets put us on the back foot, and we couldn’t really accelerate when necessary. Stu put in an admirable double, top scoring with a solid half-century, while Kinga peppered the boundary for a quick-fire 23. With Dom providing the only other glimmer of resistance with a well compiled 17, we were bowled out in the 38th over for 144.
Thanks go to Nick Allica and Connor DeBriancat (our 13 year-old with a rocket arm) for helping us out on Saturday.
Peter Weymouth
3rd XI Captain