Match Report vs Chartered Trust (Cup Final) 16 August 2011

Don’t get me wrong, I am all for equal opportunities and believe it is important to enable our lesser privileged members of society to merge into mainstream activities.

But we have to be realistic and draw a line at some point, for example would it be wise for the World Snooker Governing Body to allow a totally blind person referee at the crucible?... or would it be deemed prudent for FIFA to sanction an individual without any limbs to referee a World Cup Final? Of course not, not just for the integrity of the sport but more so to protect the individual.

So why our cup final opponents thought it a good idea to pass on the responsibility of scoring our book whilst we were fielding, to an individual who struggles with numbers, reading and writing is completely beyond me and crosses that line to the extreme. But, nonetheless, I will do what I can with what has been provided.

This is probably something that you will not hear me say too often but ‘No complaints’ yep you read that correctly! But there can be no complaints with the outcome of this final. We were beaten by 23 runs by the better team on the night.

O.K, so the form book suggested that the Casuals would end up second best so started as underdogs and yeah there were the usual 2 or 3 decisions not going our way.. but would they have affected the end result?......probably not, but one thing is for sure, there were TWO decent team performances out there and the best team on the night just did enough.

We lost the toss and were asked to have a bowl. Now I can’t tell you who bowled what overs when and when runs were or weren’t scored but I have managed to deduce some bowling figures. I can tell you that they were 0-0 at the start of the 1st over and finished on 150-3 after 18.

I can also tell you that we were unlucky with poor decisions on a direct hit run out by Ed, a caught behind off Dan’s bowling and a stumping off Pablo’s and we managed to not take 4 or 5 catches but none of them were dollies and all would have been good catches.

J Roach 1-0-5-0 (unlucky with a caught behind chance 2nd ball)

S O’Reilly 2-0-15-0 (respectable figures from our hair bear)

I Warwick 2-0-10-2 (good job by the ever dependable Dion, 2 excellent wickets, 1 caught and bowled (a skier). And then clean bowling the dangerous Mohring, the slimmer of the two)

T Hirani 1-0-13-0 (unlucky to be bowling one of the ‘slog’ overs)

G Loveridge 2-0-18-1 (unlucky with a diving caught behind effort and notched a clean bowled in his 2nd)

K Swain 2-0-23-0 (another having to deal with ‘slog’ session)

J Furnham 2-0-15-0 (respectable figures from our experienced one)

P Stephens 2-0-20-0 (of these 20, 14 were hit by same batsman after clearly being stumped!)

D Lewis 2-0-9-0 (great spell from the Chairman, should have been rewarded with a caught behind not given and a caught behind not taken! Sorry matey).

Ed Stewart 2-0-12-0 (a real skippers performance with the ball at the death)

11 extras make up the total, 7 wides, 1 no ball, 2 byes and 1 leg bye. Due to this fixture being rearranaged pretty late in the day due to the 2 previous fixtures being cancelled for rain there were no impartial umpires available, but I feel I must add here that the 3 ‘poor’ umpiring decisions were made by the same individual, whether he was at square leg or at the bowlers end, who also for some reason felt the need to tell me he was a ‘qualified’ umpire! However, you can only do your best and play it as you see it. Whichever way you look at it, Chartered Trust were good enough regardless.

And so the Casz innings. 130 would have been nicer to chase but 151 needed. A big ask but not an impossible one. Jam and our cup pinch hitter Steve O opened up and 13 off the first over got us flying toward our glorious victory…………………..??

Well, ok we know that wasn’t the case but at that point we were safely running away with it!

Not for the lack of desire and sheer effort, but we were unable to score more than 10 from a single over until the 12th and by then the run-rate was going in the wrong direction. Their bowling was tight and sharp and their fielding intelligent. All in all it boiled down to one major difference, they hit 13 boundaries to our 5, you don’t have to be too sharp….(well sharper than their scorer obviously), to work out that that equates to a minimum of 32 runs difference. We only lost by 23!

So well done to all the batsman with special mention to Ed and Luvvers who both got back in the hutch retired at 25s and with Ed ending unbeaten on 29, capped off a good all-round captains performance. A shout out should also go to Jam for his massive straight 6! Well done to Dan too for capping his good bowling performance off with a quick-fire 14 not out including 1 of our elusive boundaries.

We finished on 127 for 9 and we were pretty consistent at just over 7 an over throughout against a strong bowling attack. Less than 1.5 runs per over short of run-rate.

J Furnham bowled 15
Steve O caught 9
Kim caught 14
Luvvers bowled 27
Ed not out 29
Tesh run out 1
Pablo bowled 2
Dan not out 14
Goff run out 1
JR stumped 0
Dion stumped 0

So we fell short on the night but everybody gave their very best and that is all you can ask.

Thanks to all the fellow Casz squad members who came along and gave their support also, the best team might have won on the night but there is no question (in my mind!) as to who the best club is!

Next year we win………………..onwards and upwards

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