Selling

Match Report

A family centric Straggler side appeared in great force, and with high hopes at Selling. A grove of Smallwoods and a triad of Wrights, supported by some real stragglers (dictionary definition of the word) took to the field after skipper, Al, won the toss and elected to field, when presented with a green deck on an overcast day. A rip-roaring pace attack was led by Nick Wright, who opened the innings with a near perfect over. Ben Simpson, on the other hand, demonstrated mixed ability from the other end; two full tosses and a long hop followed by a flawless in swinging yorker, which clattered into the uprights, giving the Stragglers the early breakthrough, welcome on a muggy July afternoon. Ben’s wobblers were causing all sorts of problems, and had their other opening batsman trapped LBW in the 4th over. When exhaustion got the better of the two finely-tuned opening bowlers, the Stragglers took pace off the ball, down to the last mile per hour. Benny’s leg spin proved effective once again, aided by his brother behind the stumps, to remove the number 3 batsmen. Apart from the inexcusable achievement of taking 2 wickets with front-foot no balls off an 8-yard run up, Benny bowled a tight 9 over spell, and took 3-48. Selling began to build a 5th wicket partnership, moving on to 140-4, but some impressive hitting by the opposition number 4 was brought to an end by Mark Wright, bowling an exceptional spell of flight and guile, manipulating the batsmen with his every move, and finished up with 3-45. Ben Simpson finished Selling off in the 39th over; concluding their innings on 224.

Smallwood senior and Simpson took to the field once again to set the tone for the Straggler run chase. A few quick-fire boundaries from Smallwood senior set the crowd reminiscing of early season glory days at Milstead, only to be woken from their day dream, as he was trapped in front of all 3 and had to face the long walk back. Ben Wright joined Ben S who was already seeing it like a football, and dispatched his third ball high over the midwicket boundary. Sadly, Ben W’s excitement was cut short as an impressive yorker cleaned him up. Jasper joined Ben aiming to upstage his mate; how wrong was he. Ben dispatched every other ball to the fence for the next 3 overs, swiftly bringing up his half century. Ben then lost any regard for the size of the ground, hitting red leather into neighbouring fields, country estates and on to car roofs. His maiden century was brought about by a textbook lofted on drive, he raised his bat gracefully, and re-set himself to dispatch yet another delivery. While Ben had been distracting the crowd’s attention, Jasper had treated us to that elegant but brutal show of stroke play with which we have become familiar this season. Much to Ben’s disappointment but to Selling’s relief, his innings was bought to an end by a leg stump yorker. Benny, keen to get into the action, stamped his authority, sending a couple of long hops like tracer bullets to the midwicket fence, but his piece of the action was cut short when he was ruthlessly run out by his older brother. James Curtis’ cameo bought the stragglers within 10 runs, but his rusty technique failed him, and brought the skipper to the middle. The Smallwood brothers clinically knocked the remaining runs off to secure the win for the Stragglers, with Jasper ending the innings 60* not out. We chased the score in a mere 24.1 overs; a very time efficient and entertaining run chase for the Stragglers.