The season finally got underway in week 1, and the Gladdies had a pretty good day out all things considered. We lost the toss and were asked to bowl on a field with uncut grass heavily laden with dew. As a result, the ball was a piece of soap after a few overs, and full credit to the bowlers who toiled manfully with it for the first 26 overs. At that point, Jimbo managed to sweet talk his way with Ed the umpire into getting it replaced. With a ball that still got pretty wet even after 11am.
Brendan and Soli bowled very tight early, and Brendan removed both openers before they hit 50. A farcically fortunate fielding change brought a catch to AJ Jnr on the fence and a third wicket, but thereafter, the Fine Legs settled in. We never gave away too much, with Lach, Jamie and Dan all bowling tidy spells, but they slowly built an impressive partnership, and at 3/164 with 12 overs to go, it looked like they were really going to launch an assault.
Enter the Gladdies twin Jimmys. Ryan and Dempster ended up picking up 3 wickets a piece, plus a run out, to have the Fine Legs all out for 198, with 2 and a bit overs to go. So a very gettable 199 for victory next week, eve more so if the Council mows the grass during the week.
The Gladdies wrapped up their first win of the season with relative comfort in week 2. The Fine Legs were game and good humoured, but didn’t really have much to trouble us in the bowling department, and put in a solid 4th grade performance in the field to help us a little. Still it was not without hard work that we got the 199 required, with Kunal putting in yet another Rock like performance, anchoring the innings with an unbeaten 92. He faced the majority of the decent bowling, and consistently put away the bad balls to lead… errr carry the Gladdies innings throughout. Dan B looks set for a bumper summer too, smashing a six off his first ball, and only falling on 36 to a bit of screamer of a catch at deep square leg. A special shout out to Gus too, who came in and alpha’ed his way to 20 off about 10 balls, convincingly ensuring that Kunal wouldn’t get his ton.
