21 points dropped, as 1st XI held in a dramatic
draw
18th
May 2002
Holtwhites
Trinibis v Boxmoor CC
209
– 9 209
- 9
Having had time to reflect on the events of
Saturday, I have to confess that it had to be one of the craziest
games of cricket I have ever been involved with.
Having
won the toss, we inserted Boxmoor onto a dampish greentop and with
4 seamers in the attack, a 3rd win looked on the cards.
The wicket was always going to offer something for the bowlers and
before long, Boxmoor had been reduced to 95 – 7. Things were
looking good despite a couple of dropped catches. Boxmoor were
allowed however to make a recovery to 209 – 9 of their 53 overs
(Boxmoor's captain was responsible for the recovery with a defiant
71 -Ed), although full credit to them for punishing unbelievable
ground fielding and dropped catches, while some of the fielding
sequences wouldn’t have looked out of place on the Dire Straits
(very apt), ‘Walk of life’ video -11 dropped catches was the
final tally!!
To say the atmosphere was a little subdued at
tea was an understatement. With everyone realising the task ahead
of them, on a wicket that was still doing a bit, appetites were
not that big, I myself only managed 3 doughnuts! (that amounts to
a diet for Taff! - Ed)
Whilst the top 4 padded up, the instruction
was simple, one of us had to score a ton or we’ve had it. No
pressure!
Holtwhites made a slow, but steady start,
reaching 66 – 2 off 23 overs. Hewitt and Evans combined well to
put on 62 off 74 deliveries for the 3rd wicket to bring
HT into contention. With Hewitt departing for 71, the mantle was
taken up by Stephenson (14), who together with Evans added 41 off
43 deliveries. With the loss of Evans (64), the equation was 40 of
5 overs.
With Olam at the crease, he looked like he
was in a hurry and wanted to get back to his car (where he had
been sleeping - someone had to go and wake him to pad up), added
26 off 13 deliveries, including two enormous sixes. Through
Olam’s heroics, the final equation was 1 run to win off 5
deliveries. Simple huh?
Now I’ve been playing at Holtwhites
Trinibis and its connected variants, for over 10 years and seen
some pretty impressive collapses, but this one has to be right up
there with the best. With Holtwhites losing 4 wickets in 5
deliveries, the game ended in a dramatic draw, a feet in itself
that would be hard to repeat (At the end of the match we all
believed we had obtained a tie, however after reading the rule
book it transpired that the result was a draw with scores level -
if we had lost one more wicket, we would have earned 11 more
points and gone top of the league, but we have to say that really
it was 21 points dropped - Ed)
So with a draw grabbed from the jaws of
victory, the Stella was not as sweet as it had been in previous
weeks, however with the teams around us not making much headway,
not too much damage was done.
NB – Fielding practice Tuesday
fella’s!
David Evans
1XI Captain
