"Powerful Packwood Pulverise Stout Men of Abberley"

It was a very English morning: a cup of tepid tea, further revelations about MPs expenses and of course a chat about the weather. Home matches had been cancelled due to the saturated Abberley pitches; that's clay soil for you.
The forecast was gloomy: so should we go or should we stay? In the end we decided to travel armed with rain coats and umbrellas. In the end all such precautions were made invalid as the grey skies skudded over head but not a drop of precipitation was felt upon the receding hairline of the visiting umpire. And so to battle: Captain Richard S. won the toss for the fourth time this season and chose to field. A slightly skiddy surface didn't really bother the bowlers. Dan L. pitched it short and was thumped to the boundary:

Dan L pitched it up and took three well deserved wickets. The spinners came on and bowled well. Rupert K. and Ed T. both took wickets but a number of dropped catches meant that the batters were on the ascendancy. Packwood rattled up a very good total and declared at tea. Abberley's innings stated with a stutter. Having not played on grass for ten days it took time for our batters to time their shots. At 34 for 6 an early finish looked highly likely. But as with all great traditional Western films (and by that I mean the cowboys of North America as played by the magnificent but monosyllabic Clint Eastwood) there is always an heroic last stand. And so it was with the Abberley innings. Our "Clint Eastwood" award goes to Dan L. whose swashbuckling but ever so cool innings of 32 saved our embarrassment. Sixes and fours were recorded and an air of respectability was restored. The result was never in doubt but we had a game of cricket and didn't get wet and the tea was hot, refreshing and definitely Earl Grey.

The geo-thermal effect continues to follow the 4th XI. Yet again we managed to complete our fixture at Packwood with no rain interruptions whilst all of the home matches were cancelled due to rain.

Max managed to win the toss (yet again) and elected to bat first. The pitch was in good condition but the ball was ‘holding up’ as it was coming through to the bat. All of our higher order batters made sensible starts, putting runs on the board against some tight Packwood bowling, but then played reckless shots to straight bowling and hence ended up clean bowled! Freddie (17) and Alex (22) made valuable contributions to our final total of 95 all out off of 27 overs.

We made a fantastic start in defending our total when off of the first ball of the Packwood innings, they tried to sneak a single run and a direct hit from a throw by Jack S hit the stumps and their opening batsman was run out!! What a perfect start to the innings, unfortunately this brought in their star batsman who then proceeded to punish all of our bowlers spraying fours and sixes to all parts of the field. We tried hard to defend in the field but the Packwood batsmen were just too good at dispatching the ball to the boundary with the score progressing at an alarming rate.

Well done to Christian who finally dismissed their star man for 52 with an excellent caught and bowled when the match was all but over. The new batsman then came in and within a couple of balls Packwood had surpassed our total for the loss of three wickets.

A good all round game but inept shots at the wrong time cost us valuable wickets and hence we never managed to score enough runs to give ourselves a total that we could defend.