Telling Tails — Ravens vs Knight’s XI

Evening one and all..time for your report on what was a sunny evening at the rec primed and ready to go for our last T20 of the season.

We won the toss and due to the heat it only made sense to make the visitors sweat first 🥵

We opened the batting with Warwick and Lee, fresh back from his season of Novak Djokovic antis across the way at the tennis club…clearly tennis helps with batting as he smashed his way to 25*

The wall held up his end with some lovely cover drives to keep the score board ticking over nicely.

With Lee retired in came Laurence with some lovely stroke play to keep us in nicely in it. Charlie..well you wanted a mention 🙋‍♂️nice batting but thanks for bringing me to crease…6 and out for me.

Followed in by the rest of the team it’s fair to say that we as a team made sure they could catch!

Laurie nicely played and a quality flick of the pads for a boundary to keep our score board moving along. Credit to Malcom for his attempted ramp, stylish however it cannot ever match the first time you did it (against your own team)! 😉

We finished 140 off our 20 overs 🏏

Now then…bowling.

Warwick to open up with the visitors looking over at their score board to be level with wickets and runs, back of a length and outside off leading to two edges (textbook bowling) and then a perfectly placed delivery a few balls later to removed the next unlucky candidates off stump!

Rich to follow that with some tight bowling leading to a struggled start for their batting unit. Seano up next keeping it tight and removing their next batsman.

Charlie Seano and Will kept them in check with the ball..a wicket a piece.

Swapping sides after the first 10 overs Laurence had quality bowling efforts to keep up with and he did aided by brilliant fielding all round.

There were a few loose shots throughout this whole innings, which I may add unfortunately narrowly went in the batting units favour..an inch or two really does matter 😵‍💫😉 (wickets deserved but unfortunately did not come).

Malcolm and Pete kept them at bay and they were slowly knocking off our total with a four here and some quick singles there. Laurie bowled brilliantly and kept our hopes of a win alive.

With the scores edging closer to level it bought yours truly to bear the ball for the last over…1 needed to win…ashes day 5 and hundred finals don’t come close to the tension this gave us. (Rich fair play for putting a lid on and coming in on the batsman’s toes to stop the single)…wicket first ball and an LBW shout to follow kept the pressure building..

But it was not to be! They nicked a single to seal the match and a win for the visitors.

A fantastic night and brilliant effort by all involved..a proper cricket match!

Anyway that’s all from me good luck on Sunday to those who are playing 💯

Back to my pint and pork pie..carry on 🫡

H

[Big love to Harry for the match report and taking the Captain’s armband once again]