South Londoners Win Egg & Spoon Race
Egg & Spoon
By London Twitterer
June 18 2010
Surrey crossed the river and showed us how to play a new style of game. It wasn't pretty, but London Twitterer has made a valiant attempt to make a rather dull game seem interesting. Many thanks to London Twitterer.
A week is a long time in politics goes the cliché. And also in the eventful world of Middlesex cricket. This time a week ago we had lost our opening T20 matches, the team lacked lustre, the season was going nowhere. And now a week and just 120 or so overs later we have a new Captain (make that Captains) we have an opening partnership that is working – OK just for a few overs . . and we have three wins on the trot. And it is a beautiful day. So it is with great expectation that I set of for the floodlit match against Surrey. Floodlit? Floodlights – mid summer? In England? Five days from the longest day of the year?
At Lord’s I notice that Middlesex are billing the match against Bangladesh in a couple of weeks the clash of the big cats. Well this match should have been an appetiser for that with the Panthers against the Lions. But the trouble with twenty twenty cricket is that unless a match is high scoring and/or close it tends to lack atmosphere and bite. Though tonight the Lions well and truly bit the Panthers.
The first over set the tone for a curious batting display from Middlesex : first ball from Tremlett way down the leg side scurried to the boundary. Oh good we thought – four runs to start. But Ian Gould is quick to signal a dead ball. Why? No one understood. Who was not ready? After that the only runs of the over are the extras from a no ball – with a wasted free hit and a single. And though David Warner hit some quick runs off a wayward first over from Nel (do he and Tremlett make the tallest opening bowling partnership around?) we started losing soft wickets.
Attacking cricket is all very well but it helps not to hit the ball so high in the air that everyone single one of Surrey’s fielders could have caught it, as did David Warner. Gilchrist took three overs to even get on strike and then hit a huge six followed closely by a huge heave against Gareth Batty. Which then started a procession of Middlesex batsmen playing some decent shots, hitting some spectacular sixes and then giving Surrey fielders catching practice.
Awesome......briefly
Which led us to the very curious position of being nine wickets down with five overs to go, Pedro Collins coming to the wicket, and Shah refusing runs to shield him from the strike. Which he managed very successfully as we limped to 128. But having to turn down singles in a twenty twenty match – that is not good and the innings ended as curiously as it had begun.
We needed to bowl very tight, field very well and take early wickets – which we didn’t. That is bowl tight, field well or take early wickets and Surrey strolled to a victory that was easy but not enthralling. It didn’t have to be after the early overs put them so well ahead of the run rate they could literally stroll to victory. Even the wicket of Davies – through a juggling catch by our latest international Josh Davey did not stall them. Now why could Josh Davey still be with us but not Eion Morgan when they will both be in the same match on Saturday? How we missed Eion’s inventiveness and fielding. Ramps came in, gave good support to his captain and they did not need to take any risks against the spinners. Gilchrist juggled the bowlers as if he was a circus master but nothing worked and the inevitable was inevitable long before the inevitable happened as the Lions sauntered through the last overs as if they were on some Africa savannah feeling well fed and kingly.
A bad day at the office it sure was, let’s hope just a blip.
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010:06:22:22:35:21 by Ged.
Click here to read why I sensationally sacrificed the big bucks of Chelsea for the adventure of Watford
(image on left not representative of how relative my support of Watford is to my support of Middlesex)