Bristol's Away - C&G Glos v Middx 23 April 2006

At the start of the day

The day started out with rain in London and an indifferent forecast for Bristol. The journey in to Paddington to pick up the Inter-City wasn’t too clever with me missing a bus by 30 seconds and then finding the Central Line out for repairs and the main line train consequently packed.

I did see at Ealing Broadway two large poster sized advert boards extolling the joys of joining MCCC , good work by the club to spread the word round the county I thought , the only others I had ever seen were on the escalators at St Johns Wood tube .

The delays on travelling to Paddington made my connection to the 125 more like “Gone in 60 seconds” rather than “Brief Encounter “ , I haven’t run that fast since that curry house runner I did when I was 18 !

Pulled out of London to grey leaden skies and steady drizzle, a reserved seat is a handy thing to have on a Sunday run like this but when will the railways work out that not everyone is a 4 ft midget nowadays and give us some leg room on trains .Had a good run down to Bristol though for a fast service I was quite amused when the driver announced that she was pulling into Temple Meads and then the rest of the run to Penzance would be fast arriving at 14.30hrs. I can not believe it took nearly 150 miles to warm up the train so it could run fast, probably something to do with all the line works going on on GWR at the minute.

Keep Good Company

I was just about to start getting lost on the station when this voice behind me said “Excuse me are you going to the cricket?”The thought of a good Samaritan to help me to the ground was blown out of the water when I turned round to meet a Crusaders uniformed Chris who was obviously in the same boat as me.

The cab to the ground (no buses in station forecourt, well it was Sunday!) cost a tenner but got us there for the start of play.

Oh yes, there was a match

Good job it did or we would have missed Weeksies innings , comedy of errors run out or what .Having been inserted under grey skies Middlesex proceeded  to surrender wickets at an alarming rate , some of the catches were of a very high quality and Lewis’s bowling was excellent but to be 26-5 in 13 overs was a disaster . Enter Johann Louw to provide the Middlesex few with our day’s main course of entertainment. Neville Road is quite a large playing area but Johann still managed to monster a ball out of the ground and into someone’s back garden or maybe over the house , I lost sight of it as it entered orbit . There then followed a 10 minute delay in play while the umpires had Johann beat up a replacement ball as they were unable to find a 26 over old one . This was unfortunate as soon after the resumption of play he hit a huge skier which was neatly taken by that man Lewis. With Louw gone Chad Keegan was our only real option for runs , unfortunately the tail were of no help to him and we were all out for 95 in under 30 overs.

The Gloucestershire innings started in fine style with Louw and Keegan taking wickets, at 2-2 I thought “have we got a game on here?”  When the dangerous Spearman went to a fine catch by Scott for 3 it was 58 – 3 in the 17th over. The end was nigh with some pretty poor bowling from all but Keegan and Louw and an inspired bowling change by Ben Hutton bringing himself on to take a wicket first ball thanks to a brilliant diving catch by Ed Smith.

The game ended in heavy drizzle with everyone glad to get off, players, umpires and spectators alike .Early trains were found and I was home in Hanwell earlier than I normally am from a game at Lord’s.

Who gives a toss?

Having not read MTWD since I got home , quite deliberately as I feel the Ceefax  brigade may have influenced my report on the game I can assure folks that in all honesty from the off if you lost the toss you were going to lose the game and guess what , Ben lost the toss .

My thanks to Chris for his company today and sound knowledge of the game, nice to get a youngsters perspective of it rather than just my grumpy old Middlesex fan view.

Yes we were beaten soundly but there were plus’s to the day. The return of Chad, cut down run up but that ball still really moves through the air, Johann Louws overall performance and the fact that we are only two points behind the group leaders.