Maybe Its Because We Had A London (er!)
By Rogers and Out
March 30 2013
We have a report from Pre Season friendly Taunton of what Rogers and Out was able to catch of days play with some great pictures from Mike TAI. Most importantly we read about a very comfortable vicory.
It’s often a gamble preparing in advance to go to the last day of an away cricket match. Will the game extend until the last day ? If it does, how much play will there be ? And that’s not even factoring in the Great British Weather.
Halfway through our 3 day friendly at Taunton, the portents were good. Both teams had batted once, with our hosts holding a 28 run lead. The weather was due to be cold but dry. I’d secured myself a reasonably priced advance purchase rail ticket to Taunton from Waterloo. Surely a full day’s cricket beckoned on day three ?
Where's your dry cleaners?
However, my joy at finding out that we’d reduced Somerset to 96/8 by the close of day two was slightly tempered by the likelihood of limited action on the last day. When I actually arrived at the ground at 10:50, we were batting and required 129 to win, with James Harris and Gareth Berg having removed Dibble and Craig Overton respectively, leaving Somerset 100 all out.
Adam London and Sam Robson got us off to a steady start, facing the pacy Craig Overton from the Old Pavilion end and Gemaal Hussain from the River end. We had reached 35 with few alarms, when Hussain bowled a good ninth over, resulting in Robbo edging to Hildreth at first slip for 13.
6 more to the Middlesex
John Simpson then came to the crease and looked to be a man in a hurry, pulling a couple of sixes over the square leg boundary in addition to some well placed fours. Adam London kept ticking over as well, although he did get hit on the head by a short ball from the other Overton twin Jamie, which stunned him momentarily, but he suffered no ill effects and was able to continue without delay.
Somerset brought on George Dockrell and Adam Dibble to bowl before lunch. Although Dockrell’s first ball loosener was crashed through point for four by Simmo, he did actually manage to get quite a bit of bounce with a few deliveries. Dibble was economical with some low bounce and we found it hard to score off him.
We lunched at 98/1 and it was just a matter of time before we secured a comfortable nine wicket victory at 1:30, with London unbeaten on 59 and Simpson not out on 51, sharing a partnership of 94 (the scoreboard had erroneously indicated a partnership of 100). I was most impressed with Adam London and it was the best batting I’d seen from
Simmo for a while. He looked fit and confident.
Simmo! Simmo!
All that remained was for me to change my ticket to get an earlier train (£16.50 well spent) and kill an hour or so in the Racehorse Inn near the town centre, sampling the St. Austell Brewery’s finest ales. Happy days !
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2013:04:04:19:00:06 by BarmierKev.
If he doesn't make a few first-team appearances in 2013, hopefully that will only be because of the form of the batsmen established in the side.
All he can do is make as many runs as poss in the friendlies and second eleven, so he gets picked when there is a vacancy.
Good to see Adam London in the runs against a strong looking Somerset team, pretty much only short of Trego and Thomas.
AL I well remember saving the day (with a broken finger) with 9 down at UXB back in 2009 against Derbyshire. Not had many opportunities since.