From Smudge: A nail biting affair this one and I have to be honest with some players missing one in which I thought we may struggle. Oh no. After Bear actually won a toss, we fielded first and got off to a dream with specialist fielder Tom guy taking a great catch off the bowling of Dom second ball of the day. However whilst Rainham did lose regular wickets they were also scoring at 6 plus an over, with Dom finally picking up a further two wickets finishing with figures 3 for 57 and 15 year old Matt Davey bowling exceptionally well for his age with figures of 2 for 37 including a potential hat trick. Bear and myself tightened up the run rate with Rainham being on 104 for 6 after 26 overs. We did fall asleep for longer than normal this week, as we missed a couple of catches and some Sydney harbour fielding, left clean hitting Nick Plumridge quickly heading towards his 100 and to be fair he didn’t give a chance till near the end of his innings. It was only the guile of our skipper who tried to starve Plumridge of the bowling that brought his undoing on 103, with Rainham finishing on 198 at the end of the innings.

  A good feature so far this year has been our batting, it has been a team performance in that in previous weeks whilst the top order have got runs the middle/lower order haven’t and this week, and last to some extent, the top 4 have declined to trouble the scorers too much the middle /lower have succeeded but Toms 4 or 6 (depends on which scorecard you look at) off 55 balls was interesting and then got a freaky run out. Martin Wren got a start, but it was skipper Bear and VC Hobo that did the damage with a solid partnership of 70 that made the difference. (I would have loved to have seen Hobos face and what he subsequently said after when Bear pulled out the old sweep shot at a most critical time only to see is just glance past leg stump) and when we needed 29 off 2 overs you were thinking should we just settle for the draw, but some positive shot play from Hobo, in particular, proving he’s got more than just the nurdle to his game (He even swiped one across the line for four, it was placement though more than start up the tractors) needing 11 from the last over and 4 from the last ball Dom stepped up to square cut the ball for 4 to a rather loud cheer and a lot of jumping up and down and even dare I say it the skipper kissed the vice. A good victory, it is the sign of a good side if you can scrape together a win or as many points as possible even though you have not played to your full potential.