- The Strollers vs The Twenty Minuters
- Civil Service Sports Ground
- 11th May 2003
- Toss: The Strollers, but then negotiated by Skip
- Result: Lost by 121 runs
- Man of the Match: Yorkee
| The Strollers innings | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Matthews | c Lloyd-Baker | b Elwes | 3 |
| Sadique | run out (Cannon) | 89 | |
| Aziz | not out | 56 | |
| Extras | (b 1, lb 4, w 33, nb 16) | 54 | |
| Total (for 2 wickets, declared after 28.3 overs) | 204 | ||
DNB: Zia, Robinson, Clark, French, Lees, Edens, Lloyd-James, Thomas
FoW: 1-8, 2-204
| Bowling | O | M | R | W | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adam Curtis | 8 | 0 | 52 | 0 | (6 w, 10 nb) |
| Jamie Elwes | 4 | 0 | 23 | 1 | (12 w) |
| Piers Cannon | 5 | 0 | 25 | 0 | (7 w) |
| Chris Cohen | 6 | 0 | 56 | 0 | (5 w) |
| Reg Redfern | 5.3 | 0 | 48 | 0 | (3 w, 1 nb) |
| The Twenty Minuters innings | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Matt Maxwell-Scott | c | b Lloyd-James | 4 |
| Henry Lloyd-Baker | b | b Lees | 1 |
| Jamie Elwes | run out (Edens) | 18 | |
| +Ed Clark | b | b Clark | 17 |
| Jim Greayer | c | b Edens | 2 |
| *Toby Groom | b | b Lloyd-James | 11 |
| Piers Cannon | c | b Lees | 0 |
| Robbie Scott | b | b Robinson | 1 |
| Adam Curtis | run out | 8 | |
| Reg Redfern | hit wicket | b French | 11 |
| Chris Cohen | not out | 1 | |
| Extras | (b 4, lb 3, w 3) | 10 | |
| Total (all out, after 37.4 overs) | 84 | ||
| Bowling | O | M | R | W | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lees | 8 | 2 | 24 | 1 | |
| Lloyd-James | 8 | 4 | 9 | 2 | |
| Edens | 4 | 1 | 8 | 2 | |
| Robinson | 6 | 0 | 10 | 1 | |
| French | 7.4 | 3 | 19 | 1 | |
| Clark | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | |
| Zia | 2 | 0 | 7 | 0 |
Match Summary
Rain clouds scudded overhead on a bitterly cold May afternoon, as The Twenty Minuters took to the park for their inaugural fixture against a 'casual' Civil Service team. The toss was lost, but total faith in his team's ability notwithstanding, the Skipper fell to his knees and successfully begged to be allowed to bowl first. All fears of a humiliation were temporarily dispelled in the second over: Elwes found the edge, Baker 'showed balls' (as the scorebook infamously records) to take the catch, and suddenly The Twenty Minuters had arrived. Then the nightmare began. The rain began to fall, the ball got wet and the grass slippy, and the bowling took a turn for the worse. A succession of wides and aerial no-balls failed to bore the opposition batsmen to death — our one remaining hope — and anything that made it onto the cut strip was dispatched with contemptuous ease. A sporting declaration finally put The Twenty Minuters out of their misery.
After this brutal initiation into the world of casual cricket, our top-order prepared for action with the stench of death all around. The opposition bowling attack was ferocious, relentless, and utterly mirthless. A breezy 18 from Elwes convinced some that calculating the required run rate was not an entirely pointless exercise, but his lazy run out, followed, by the rapid dismissal of Greayer, put paid to this delusion. Skipper and keeper, the former despite a horrific knee injury sustained in the field, stemmed the tide briefly with a solid if unglamorous partnership. But in the end the bowling was fast and straight, and far too good for the middle-order. A moral victory was attained in the dying moments, when Reg carted a slower ball over the boundary for the only six of the match, but another entertaining run out sealed victory for The Strollers. A thoroughly demoralising affair, which has left many psychological and physical scars.
