On day one finally, the Gladdies had a pretty frickin awesome day this summer. And in no way can that be connected to the fact that we were playing the other team that hadn’t won a game yet this season.
We lost the toss and bowled, but in the humid conditions, Gus and Rookie generated plenty of movement, and while the Benchwarmers got a few away, the wickets started coming pretty quickly. Gus got 2, Rookie 3, and the change bowlers did their part, with AJ Snr taking 2/3 off 5, and Jimbo 2/2 off 0.5. When the dust settled, we had knocked em over for 60 in 20 overs. Even though they only had 10 players, it was still almost as many wickets as we’d taken in the first two games.
TJ and Kunal set about building the response, and by the time stumps were drawn, we’d already taken first innings points, and started to build a platform for outright next week. Rookie and Rob will be at the crease first up next Saturday, already 45 runs to the good of the Benchwarmers, with 5 wickets in hand.
We sure got it done day two, wrapping up our first outright win in many, many years to get some points on the board in 2017-18.
Rookie played some great shots on his way to a quickfire 46 while Rob rode his luck well to contribute a vital 38. Dan and Marty probably wished they didn’t bat, but we got to 184 with just 10 overs used up, giving us plenty of overs to knock over the Benchwarmers a second time.
Turned out we didn’t need many, as with only 8 players present, they never really looked like batting the overs or passing our score. Marty continued his fine form on Beaman Park, picking up 5/15 as we wrapped them up for 60 odd again, recording a victory by an innings and 63 runs in the process. A top effort all round.
