2s lose to Long Ditton by 1 wicket

Last Saturday was one of those awesome days of cricket that if you were part of you will never forget. Playing on a difficult pitch to time the ball on RCC made a hash of the batting. It was slow going at first against tight, straight bowling from Long Ditton, but possibly the biggest mistake the team and the skipper made was not reading the track as being a 140/150 par score. Decent knocks from Pete Dandy (27), Ross Cameron (25) and the rest of the top 5 started to help build the foundations of the innings but none of the team were able to push on and set a decent total. Ultimately, 125 would prove to be too small to defend.

As ever the team did not go down without a fight. Tim Watts on his RCC debut bowled his variety of left arm chinamen and picked up both openers before his shoulder tired. A dropped catch at this point proved vital as the 3rd wicket partnership took the Long Ditton score from 23 to 95 for 2. With the opposition only requiring another 31 runs to win with 8 wickets in hand the 2s looked like facing their heaviest defeat of the season. It took a Herculean effort from Paul Matthews (4 for 30) to pick the team up by the scruff of the neck, throw them over his shoulder and carry them close to the winning line when utter defeat looked inevitable.

At the other end Ross Cameron (3 for 34) suddenly came to the party, attacked the stumps and picked up 3 wickets with his top of off line and length. Suddenly Long Ditton were 119 for 9 and the pendulum seemed to have swung in the other direction. Cameron then fired two deliveries past the bat and pad of the Long Ditton number 11 which barely missed the stumps – fractions away. Matthews bowled a delivery that looked straight through the batsman’s defences until he just managed to jag down an inside edge onto his pads. It was just not meant to be. Long Ditton squeezed the runs they needed and scrapped home.

A difficult day to digest. We lost it at any number of points; poor batting, bowling 22 wides to their 6, a slip in the field here or there... Ultimately, it was one of those amazing games of cricket that keep us interested in playing. Surprisingly cricket is rated as the second most played sport in the world (google it if you don’t believe me). Maybe not so surprising if a 6 hour game can end like this...

Man of the match: Paul Matthews.
(report by Hemish Gunasekara)