Islip vs Holton & Wheatley
Sunday 6 June 2010
Short Report by Alan Banyard
Holton batting collapses after rain.
This was Holton's first home game of the season and not one of our best performances, though adverse condition did play a significant part.
In dry conditions, Islip batted first and despite several edges off Graham Hawkins and Maheshthat didn't go to hand, got off to a good start. Openers Brian Deely (63) and Desmond (42) put on 110 for the first wicket. The stand was finally broken when Desmond was run out and that signalled something of a collapse as Islip slipped to 125 for 6. After a 7th wicket partnership took the score to 166, Holton polished off the innings at 172. Mahesh and John Kelly turned in good bowling performances, taking 3 wickets each.
The wicket didn't play too badly, except for some variable bounce, especially a few that kept low in the latter part of the innings. At the break, the impetus was with Holton and 172 seemed a challenging but not impossible target.
During the tea break, the heavens opened, the covers were rushed out and it wasn't clear whether the game would be completed. As it turned out, after 20 minutes the rain abated and shortly after the game re-commenced.
John Simpson and Hugh Kitchen opened and two things almost immediately became very clear - firstly Islip had two very good opening bowlers in JK (3 for 13) and J Appleton (4 for 13) - and secondly the wicket had been severely affected by the rain with much more variable bounce, including freqent "shooters" that hardly bounced at all.
Needless to say, Holton's innings collapsed to 69 all out. The highlight of the innings was John Simpson who carried his bat through the innings to score 45 not out. Even John found batting very difficult, however he managed to consistently get some bat on deliveries that were near unplayable for others. In the circumstances, it was a very fine innings. No one else reached double figures.
Altogether, nine players got ducks, including four for Islip, which does say something about the wicket.