Swings & Roundabouts

Top scorer
By Grockle
August 9 2002

A hit and miss day for us. Holding the initiative at the start, we give it to Kent only to scrabble it back before the end. Poor batting consistency again but a revival in the bowling put the game back in the balance.

v KENT CC1@ CANTERBURY AUGUST 7 2002

DAY ONE

DAY TWO

DAY THREE

DAY FOUR

Set it up and then allow it to be knocked down why don't ya?  Having had a good day on Day One, we manage to put ourselves on the back foot with a pretty poor batting performance on the second day after quite a reasonable start.

Why do we always have to do it the hard way?  I've been writing these for a number of years now and I can rarely recall a match where we got hold of it from the start and squeezed it until we claimed the victory.  Such is NOT a game at Canterbury. 

We left our intrepid heroes at 64 for 2 in their reply to Kent's 271 all out.   Having lost captain Cox and Mike Burns before the end of Day One it was down to Matt Wood and Peter Bowler to hold the fort and cement a decent reply - and everything was going swimmingly until Wood was out after top scoring with 55.  The bright sparks of our reply were the 50 from Bowler and a storming 49 not out from Richard Johnson off 29 balls with 7 fours and a six.  I always think he's left out of the run chases when he's good for a few lusty blows at the end of an innings.  Not a lot else to mention really - a five ball duck from Blackwell, a two ball duck from Dutch and a few runs from others but nothing over 20

We came up 44 runs short, thanks mostly to the efforts of a Mr Khan (18/3/76/5) and gave the initiative back to the home side.  They, of course, took it with both hands and belted away with it. At over 70 for one we were in deep deep do do.  But the boys rallied and had created something of a revival before the end of the day came.   Caddick (3/53), Johnson (1/44) and Bulbeck (1/34) all took wickets as Kent's great start faltered and they finished the day at 176 for the loss of 5 wickets.  This puts their lead at 220 and with our inconsistent batting, I wouldn't like to see it get close to 300 or we'll be getting close to another loss and 20 more points down the drain.

Two days left, 5 wickets to get and then the mere question of about 275 runs to knock off - piece of cake (don't even think about anyone called Martin-Jenkins!!)

But it's rain delayed on the third morning and it might just work in our favour if today is badly affected.  If we can take the last half for few runs and have a day to get less than 300 we might just forget it's a four day game and treat it as a one dayer!!   We could use the points - and another five-fer from Caddy!