Seb and Muz opened up. Seb bowled some good balls and was unlucky with a couple that didn’t go to hand through the slip region, but generally bowled too much down legside, and got taken apart a bit by their skipper. Muz bowled extremely well, beating the bat time and again, but got no luck whatsoever. A large majority of the runs he conceded were off the edge of Nick Evans’ bat, and two plumb lbws were turned down, according to Stan behind the stumps. In hindsight we should have had a third man instead of a fine leg, which would have stopped the flow of runs off the edge. Anyway, when Geoff Harris says it’s the unluckiest spell he’s seen, it must have been an unlucky spell, because he’s seen a lot of cricket. Tidy came on and bowled as per usual, never a bad ball, and was also quite unlucky. As a result they looked to get after George a bit more, but both he and Matt, bowling at the end of the innings, kept the score lower than it could have been. The only batsman they had who looked like a quality player was run out by a yard without facing, and when the finger stayed down he went on to get 50. It’s easy to see why they are halfway up the league.

At tea Stan said that to be consistent, he would not be able to give any lbws. When the old man was given out sweeping, well down the wicket, Stan had to be physically restrained from confronting him. After that decision, there was no way Stan was giving his wicket away, and he proceeded to bat beautifully for 69. For the second consecutive week, he enjoyed a profitable partnership with Will, who again looked in no trouble at all, cementing his no. 3 slot. After Stan was dismissed by a ball that he didn’t pick up in the dark, Si came in and was given out run out without facing, which he wasn’t particularly happy about, to say the least. So they took three wickets, two of which were questionable, and one of which was the result of bowling fast bowlers in the dark. It has to be said that against that standard of team, we should easily be able to compete in this league.