Produced by Cricket Statz - www.cricketstatz.com
Last updated 01-Nov-2009.
Match Report
Sarisbury U15As' chances of landing back-to-back championships surely died on Friday night as they lost to Portsmouth & Southsea by 8 wickets at The Green.
We won the toss and batted. Sam Floyd and Matt Spicer both hit early boundaries and were scoring at a reasonable rate before Matt was caught on the deep extra cover boundary for 13. The change bowling was tidy and scoring came mainly through singles and at halfway we only had 55-1. Fraser Moon and Sam picked up the pace with some skilful placement and the odd lusty blow and Sam retired for the fourth time in six innings by reaching his 50 with a six just to the church side of the clubhouse. Fraser was the main instigator of one over that went for 24 but he was dismissed for 43, an innings containing three sixes. Batsmen came in and unselfishly threw the bat, most effectively by Will Jacobs with a quick-fire 19. The most memorable shot was a pulled bullet through midwicket from Rob Clinch in the penultimate over and we reached a very creditable 170-7 from 20 overs.
Much of the Sarisbury innings had been peppered by comments from the visiting followers moaning about the size of the ground, which apparently made the game "farcical". But when it was their turn to bat, they got off to a flyer with 64 off the first five overs and suddenly the tune changed, though for a few minutes drowned out by Keith Hammond rehearsing his entry for the UK Yapping Loudly About Nothing Championship within earshot of the scorers, who were having a hard enough job keeping up with events as it was. All the bowlers took a bit of stick but it was Ollie Challis who took the two wickets to fall, one with a sharp turner to hit the stumps and the other with a lovely piece of deceptive flight to allow Matt Spicer to claim a stumping. At 105-2, a couple more wickets, while probably not affecting the final result, might have given the boys both heart and confidence, but with just a run a ball required, there was some careful and astute stroke making before Portsmouth & Southsea reached their target with ample time to spare. It was hard against a quality batting line-up to keep the score down once batsmen got themselves in, but our bowling and fielding was not up to its usual standard.
The lads can make amends on Sunday at Portsmouth, 10am start at St Helens ground on Southsea seafront. Can Sam or Fraser hit one onto the beach?
