A battling defeat

As I said in yesterday's post, North West Water lost to BT on Tuesday evening on a difficult pitch at Oswestry School.

We won the toss and batted but made slow progress in the first ten overs, despite some dogged resistance from our opening pair Pete Danby and Rory Jones.

Rory continued his fine form with the bat, producing a couple of superb boundaries, while Pete showed a deft touch to keep things ticking over in the face of some accurate, hostile bowling.

The pitch didn't help. There had been plenty of showers during the day and the pitch cut up pretty quickly, which made the bounce more uneven than usual. One delivery even reared up and hit Rory on the helmet.

We continued to struggle throughout the innings, despite a cameo innings from Steve Daulby, who crashed a couple of boundaries before departing. I ended up going in with a couple of overs left and ended on four or five not out, but not before almost gloving a catch to mid on and then falling flat on my face trying to set off for a quick single. I really must invest in some spikes.

We ended on 78 and, in truth, it was always 20 short of a competitive total. We bowled tightly for most of their innings, with our skipper, Justin Evans, bowling economically and taking another wicket with his increasingly effective leg spin.

I opened the bowling and was given four straight overs, taking one for nine. It was the best I'd bowled for ages, although my wicket came from a wide ball that was knicked through to the agile Pete Danby behind the stumps. It was probably my worst delivery, but as I'd beaten the outside and inside edge of both batsmen a couple of times, and had one ball sail over middle stump, I felt I'd earned it.

Steve Daulby also bowled a good spell, taking one wicket and instigating a run out, to leave BT needing 26 off the last four overs. At this stage it looked like it could be a close finish, but BT hit back through a tall left-hander, who simply demolished our attack. They ended up winning with two overs to spare.

It was a disappointing end to a decent match. We're now turning our attention to the rematch with BT next Tuesday, followed by Shropshrie Health at Whittington on Wednesday. We need a win.