Eltham CC

Match Report

Match report Eltham CC Vs Footscray CC

Saturday comes around and with a mixture of first game of the season nerves I arrive at Waring Park only to discover that in this new age of squad rotation we seem to have 44 players awaiting a start time. After discovering that it wasn't new substitution rule brought in this year and that for the second week running Bexley Council had double booked the pitch. However, to make things interesting they had decided not to tell us and a recamp to Hall Place was the result.

Start take two.

Well shocker of a pitch, yes indeed. Firstly, the pitch was so far away from the changing rooms that I wished I had bought a tent. In wind, rain and cold that made me think of last year (shouldn't we start the season at Easter now?) and a pitch so full of bumps, hollows and undulations that I thought we were on a links golf course.

To the game. Matthew lost the toss and we were put in first. Matt and I went out to attempt to get us of to a flying start. I was soon flying back to the boundary after nicking probably the only ball to stay on a line, length, true height etc straight to the keeper. (Editor's note: hmmmm) The rest of story runs like this: Matt hit out and got a low one, Colin was watchful and got a squat one, Matthew looked good and got a stumpy one, John played nicely and got one that rose on him, Phil had a style all of his own before missing one, Pete smashed it to all parts then got one that leapt and seemingly stopped in mid air, Andy got a "near to the ground" one. Mick got one that climbed, Richard took the option of hitting it as hard as he could and with Pete made the crucial contribution down the order and finally Andy got one that was so weird that almost the only thing he could was to clip it onto his own stumps. Innings over (credit must be given to MS Word synonyms).

So with a cold tea in a cold, wet and windy unsheltered position we wondered whether 96 was enough, would we be home in time for the Eurovision, would we escape with minor hyperthermia? Then the sun came out!

So with Footscray only requiring 2.74 an over we went out to field. Oh, have I mentioned that it was a limited over match? It was about now that we found out!!!

So with a small run chase required odd things began to happen. One of the openers looked like he pulled a muscle soon after they started and so singles weren't taken, and this set the tone for their innings. Even with this they were making a steady start and saw off our openers, albeit not without chances. After a steady start they took a safe single to Phil, but after lulling them into a false sense of security with some truly non text book fielding, he collected and beautifully threw to Pete who took the bails off and Goodwin was gone.

With that the runs seemed to dry up and the wickets kept falling. Tight spells from Pete and Colin kept things tight at one end. With the strike bowlers of Page and Collins doing their jobs from the other (ok ok I couldn?t resist), things started to look interesting. With one over left and the ball in the skipper's safe hands and 19 needed, the first three balls were dots with the batsman seemingly not interested. Then he hit a six, followed by a four and suddenly we were all wondering what had happened to their run chase. Anyway we won, so although it looks on paper a tight game, in reality they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Your ECC Reporter today: Liam Collins