The Llamas turned up, fairly punctually, at Palewell Common for their second shot at The Mad Ratters. We were missing many key players again but had plenty of good players filling in instead. It was nice to welcome Olly Smith for his first performance for The Llamas and Sam Hunter Jones for his first game this season. John and Lewis were back again to help out and the rest of the team was composed of even more familiar faces; Froud, Ward, Roberts, Vaughan-Fowler, Moss, Pitts and Percy.
We lost the toss and were asked to bat. Froud opened with Ward, the pair achieved their fist aim of getting to 5 overs without loosing a wicket, Ward was however upset with his choice of shot shortly after when bowled for 3. Roberts came in at three but a good ball found the gap when he was playing a defensive shot and he was bowled for 1. Vaughan-Fowler came in at four and played a wonderful combination of his hard hitting style and intelligent shot choice to make it to 32 before popping one into the bowlers hands. Shortly afterwards Froud got confused about which end the bowler would be coming from leading to a distraction which caused him to play a similar half hearted shot popping the ball into the short square legs hands, dismissed for 17. Olly our new recruit played gloriously before also being caught for 17, Sam was unlucky when caught for 1. Our tail end played well under pressure, Jon absorbed the best ball of the match for us, Mossy found his stride before being bowled for 7..unfortunately by Pete Lawrence, Lewis was strong and resilient scoring 4, Perc brave and artful also scoring 4 and Davids not out for 13. Wow. With 15 extras The Mad Ratters had to chase down 114 runs.
The pitch had been quite fair Longitudinally but laterally was highly unpredictable. Our only chance was to bowl them all out…
CVF opened and bowled 7 overs with three maidens, two wickets for 21 runs. A good start. Percy also took 2 wickets and we looked like we were in business. Ward was cheap but unrewarded. Olly got a wicket in his first over as did Roberts (as promised). Lewis took an amazing catch as did Percy but in the end it wasn’t enough and we were chased down in 20 overs.
The teas were amazing and the opposition were wonderful sports.
Llama Of The Match: CVF
Special mention: Lewis for resilience at the crease and sublime fielding efforts.
Hugo Froud
I hope you missed my brownies. I missed you. X