We won!

Well, we finally got our season under way with a hard fought victory in a close encounter with a new side – the Ellises.

Our victory was largely down to two fine individual performances, one from the increasingly important Rory Jones and the other from skipper Justin Evans, whose three wickets late on turned the game decisively in our favour.

We batted first, having only managed to assemble a team of ten and I was an unwilling starter having come down with a nasty dose of man flu (and of course I was feeling very sorry for myself, snorting and sniffing my way through our warm up.

Anyway, we got off to a decent start through Mike Stokes and Geraint Jones, before Rory, who had suffered a blow to the head during a school match earlier in the day, went in at number four with Steve Daulby. Steve rattled his way to 15 with a succession of boundaries before losing his wicket.

I then joined Rory, who was playing well against a real mixed bag of bowlers. Although I was still feeling sorry for myself, I made 14 before attempting a suicidal second and running myself out for the second time this year. The score was around 90 at that stage with around three overs to go and, thanks to fine attacking shots from Rory, we ended our innings on 123 with Rory going for 40 off the final ball of the innings. That gave us our largest total of the season and definitely something to bowl out.

I opened the bowling with Huw and, after a decent first over, I had a horrible second (going for 10, I think). Fortunately, Huw was more successful taking a wicket in each of his two overs as we started to put pressure on our opponents.

Jimal then produced a fine spell and, along with his brother, Liam, who turned out at very short notice, we made sure were still very much in the game at the half way point. However, we were having difficulty with one of their batsmen, who escaped three difficult catches and while he was at the crease, they always looked favourites.

Thankfully, Justin – who had been keeping wicket – stepped up to remove him, quickly followed by two more wickets to give us victory by 10 runs.

It was a great win – hopefully to be followed by a few more....