HYTHE & DIBDEN CRICKET CLUB

NEW FORST CUP QUARTER-FINALS

BASHLEY RYDAL 'B' vs HYTHE UNDER 13'S

7th July @ Bashley Park

A Roller Coaster Affair Which Left Us Walking Away Feeling That Maybe We’d Been Mugged!

With the Coach on tour duty it was left to Mrs Froggett and Julian Chalmers to look after the side for a massive game which could have seen our Under 13's become the first Hythe side to reach the Semi Finals since 1990. Here's how the evening went for JC and the boys

Match Report : Arsene Wenger ( you'd have thought )

Bad News: On a day that saw copious heavy downpours this game seemed as though it was a nailed on cancellation.

Good News: However, no phone calls so we trundled over to the microclimate of sunny Bashley and were greeted by a fairly dry pitch!

Bad News: Disappointingly the apparently overprotective grounds man relegated the boys to the artificial strip.

Good News: At least the game was still on and on paper a very tight game lay ahead with Hythe feeling fairly optimistic of making a Semi Final slot!

Bad News: We lost the toss.

Good News: They decided to field which is a rare and strange decision for evening games with the possibility of fading light when cloudy.

Bad News: We only had 10 players as rain had been assumed to have stopped play for one of the team.

So to the match and sadly from that point on it was virtually all bad news.

Marc Reid slipped and fell in the first couple of deliveries whilst backing up but managed to scramble back to his crease. That was the first sign that the very damp artificial strip was going to cause us problems. Sure enough on the 6^th ball of the game Richard Jones was clean bowled for 0 to one that seemed to hit something of a dull spot and kept low on him. That was to be the story of the innings!

In the 2^nd over we had the dubious experience of facing what can only be described as a bit of a chucker….(A quiet discussion was had with their coach and sporting leniency prevailed!).

Following that Marc Reid was caught for 1 and Tom Smith was clean bowled for 2. However, when our friend with the interesting action was allowed to bowl a 3^rd over and duly clean bowled 2 in 2 (which also appeared to keep low) the sporting nature felt as though it was being stretched somewhat leaving Hythe with 14 runs on the board with 5 wickets down and only 6 overs gone!

We limped along until the 9^th over when Chalmers, who had shown some good resistance, was (yes you guessed it) clean bowled to one that kept low. Normally top score would bring a spring to your step, a standing ovation blah blah blah… but when it’s only 10 and your team in more trouble than they’d been all season, the spring isn’t very well coiled and the crowd somewhat less exuberant!

A glimmer of light followed as Millar and Griffin showed more resistance and put together our best partnership of 9 taking the score from 19 through to 28. Ok you know the next bit…. Yep Griffin was then clean bowled very shortly followed by Bidwell leaving us on 29 with our last batsman in as we had no number 11.

Facing possibly his only delivery of the season (or at least the first for a very long time) George Podroma crunched the ball high into the air on it’s way for our only boundary of the match and to a whoop of excitement from the travelling fans…… only to see it drop straight down the throat of the only fielder there who duly caught it without having to even move one step!! And the just about summed up our innings!! So Hythe & Dibden all out for 29 runs from 13 overs, our lowest score of the season by miles!

It is worth pointing out that the clean bowled wickets were not due to reckless poor shots by the boys but mostly when trying to defend balls that seemed to keep very low. And to back that up we lost “7” wickets clean bowled in that one innings versus only 20 clean bowled wickets in our other 9 previous matches put together! And that was the first time this season the under 13s have been All Out. Something to be proud of me thinks.

Blimey this match report is a right old yarn (sorry!). Anyway the Bashley B innings is a very short report……

Quite simply our boys’ bowled fairly well, though the quicker bowlers struggled with the slippery surface at the delivery point at times. The Bashley batsmen played the wicket more knowingly than we did and appeared cautiously tuned into the occasional low one which they blocked out well. One highlight was our own Tom Smith getting a clean Bowled – I didn’t quite see but I hope it did keep low – did it Tom? Anyway, that was as good as it got…. Bashley scored the only solitary boundary of the entire game and passed our miserly 29 runs after 8.3 overs which was hardly a charge but with plenty of wickets in hand. Apart from the single boundary each side managed two 2’s and everything else was scored in singles!

All in all Bashley played the pitch better than our boys who were done for by the uneven bounce but that’s cricket I guess. Hopefully we will fair better when we travel there again soon to face the unbeaten Bashley A side in the league! Let’s hope for a game on the main batting strip!

Good battling performance from the boys in a game best forgotten apart from the pitch knowledge!

Toss Won by : Bashley Rydal 'B'

Innings of : HYTHE 29 All Out (13 Overs)

Innings of : BASHLEY RYDAL 31 For 1 (8.3 Overs)

(G.Wilson 15*, J.Cooper 5, J.Corbett 3*)

Hythe Bowling