A high-quality game was nearing a tense finish at Provender, when the weather intervened, for the first time this season, and very disappointing for all involved. The Stragglers had been asked to field on a day with plenty of dark clouds threatening. A pair of Snapes...
Victories at Provender are to be cherished; they don't turn up very often, and consecutive wins are unprecedented. It did not look so positive after three overs, when a handful of loose deliveries had been smacked to the boundary by the Provender openers, and 28 runs...
The fixture at Provender provides one of the high quality highlights of the Straggler season, and this year saw a tense game taken down to the wire. On a glorious summer afternoon, and with a team notably lacking in terracotta warriors, Hugo Snape won the toss for the...
Graham Smith, our very generous host at Provender, always has something (or usually someone) up his sleeve to keep the Stragglers on their toes and dancing; and this year it was no different, as Straggler openers, Simon Allport and Jasper Smallwood, faced up to the...
Graham Smith, our very generous host at Provender, always has something (or usually someone) up his sleeve to keep the Stragglers on their toes and dancing; and this year it was no different, as Straggler openers, Simon Allport and Jasper Smallwood, faced up to the...
Graham Smith, our host at Provender, responded to a first defeat to the Stragglers in 2012, by further strengthening a side, which would have given the Australians a fair run for their money! As was amply demonstrated when the opening pair of pace men tore through the...
Three days later at Provender, Hugo was determined to reverse the sequence of close defeats, which have been a feature of the Provender fixture. This time, batting first, the line up lived up to its billing. Al Smallwood tucked in first, reaching a half century in...
Provender provides the most lovely venue and, in three years the most challenging of opponents, and so it proved once more as the unbeaten season came to a tense end with a last ball decision. Opening the innings, James Grant, set off as if he had a ferry to catch...
It is a real privilege to play cricket at Provender, although our host, Graham Smith, tends to select his invitation side to win. On the strength of the 2009 Straggler showing he drafted in Martin Saggers, recently of Kent and England, to give his attack a bit of zip....
Provender is a new fixture for 2009, on wonderful ground created by Graham Smith, a very generous host indeed. Provender elected to bat, their opening pair untroubled by some hostile bowling from Harry Thompson and Charlie Munton, and cruised to 100 in the 17th over....