League Match vs The Lamb, 29th April 2006, London Fields

Sambucca'd!
by our regular occasional correspondent, Andy Wyatt

The first League game of the season saw a potentially very strong Fields XI take the pitch against the Lamb. Membership has increased over the close season and some exciting new recruits resulted in some tough decisions for the selectors.

Our opening pair of Rick Derons and Will Isaac threatened, but did not have the rub of the green nor the edges go to hand. We pegged the Lamb back, due to two bowlers performing well from the non-Turley end. Steve Donelan and Jakob Bumke both mesmerised the batsmen with their bag of tricks and grabbed a brace of wickets each for very few runs.

Going into the last nine overs the opposition were 149-4, still with the potential to set us a challenging total.

Up to the plate stepped Pete Morris, fast left-armer, and Dave Hickey, slow left-armer. The Lamb, while trying to raise their run-rate, could hardly lay a bat on either of them, and were restricted to 176 in their 35 overs.

If team selection was difficult, the batting line-up permutations were almost infinite. No rabbits here. But we have had strong batting line-ups collapse before.

An opening maiden was the calm before the storm. 17 came off the next. Abdul was the only early bowler with any pretensions to tightness and we were soon rolling toward victory. Dave Hickey was the chief destroyer, making batting look very easy for his half-century. Rhodri Evans looked solid until he was run out attempting an unlikely looking third, as did Andy Wyatt before shouldering arms to a ball that would have taken middle stump if he had not plonked his leg in the way.

Jason Lord then played the captain's innings to see us home safely in the company of Alec McCrindle, who had time for a trademark big six.

Victory with seven wickets and seven overs to spare. Time for a celebratory drink, in the company of the opposition - who certainly did not look disconsolate in the pub, where they finally managed to inflict damage on our team - with the aid of sambucca rather than cricket balls.

Here's the scorecard:

Lamb Batting:

Batsman	Scoring	How Out	Bowler	Total
John H	-	caught Jason	Steve D	27
Toby	-	bowled	Steve D	26
Pete M	-	caught Rhodri	Jakob	34
Abdul	-	lbw	Jakob	23
Pete T	-	lbw	Pete	14
Tom	-	bowled	Pete	8
Andy G	-	bowled	Dave H	0
			Extras	32
Total: 176 for 7 in 35 overs

London Fields Bowling:

Name	Overs	Maidens	Runs	Wickets	Average
Rick	5	1	27	0	-
Will	3	0	36	0	-
Steve D	5	0	12	2	6
Matt T	5	0	29	0	-
Jakob	5	1	20	2	10
Alec	3	0	32	0	-
Pete	5	1	14	2	7
Dave H	4	0	9	1	9

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London Fields Batting:

Batsman	Scoring	How Out	Bowler	Total
Dave H	-	caught	Shaz	65
Rhodri	-	run	out	24
Andy	-	lbw	Andy	28
Jason	-	not	out	21
Alec	-	not	out	8
Matt T	did	not	bat	-
Pete	did	not	bat	-
Rick	did	not	bat	-
Will	did	not	bat	-
Steve D	did	not	bat	-
Jakob	did	not	bat	-
			Extras	33
Total: 179 for 3 in 27.4 overs

Lamb Bowling:

Name	Overs	Maidens	Runs	Wickets	Average
Abdul	5	0	17	0	-
Andy	5	0	53	1	53
Pete T	3	0	30	0	-
Pete J	3	0	27	0	-
Shaz	4	0	25	1	25
John H	3	1	3	0	-
Pete M	3	1	6	0	-
Tom	1	0	5	0	-
Toby	0.4	0	9	0	-

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