Sun 22nd May 2011

Friendly fire rains down at the Manor!

Sway's Sunday Friendly XI ventured to nearby Langley Manor for the first time and found themselves up against a team made up of mostly 1st and 2nd team players, Steve Hannibal won the toss and thought it best to field....

On a good batting track James Howard and Sam Harvey opened the bowling and a long hard 40 overs started with just the occasional moment of hope thrown in. At 42 in just the 5th over Dapper picked up the first wicket L.Jerram well caught by Casper Todd at cover this bringing in former Sway player KEVIN Cresswell (not Ken as Marshall calls him on the website) anyway Ken and J.Wateridge rattled along at a fair old rate until with the score on 128 Nathan David induced a false shot from Cresswell and Hanni held the catch at square leg. Any glimmer of excitement in the Sway ranks were quickly extinguished as in strode Langley's ultra confident looking Aussie star import Hamish Blomfield, David floated up a perfect length off break found the outside edge of the bat and young keeper Dom Keen held the catch sending Blomfield back to catch up with the Grand Prix. David went on to claim a further 2 wickets including Wateridge for 62, and Andy Hillyar also picked a couple of wickets as The Manor slumped to 185 - 7 off 28 overs, unfortunately  First team skipper J.Brown launched a savage attack on the bowling assisted by S.Peters they added 120 runs and when Brown had completed his century (16x4 4x6) he declared the innings closed on 305 after 37 overs. Dapper managed to remove Mr.Lee from the pieometer leader board as his 7th over went for 27 runs with Dave Hurrell, Dave Marshall and James Marshall spending a lot of time retrieving the ball from under the few remaining cars that the Langley members had not moved - bowling figures will be on the database shortly, those with a sensitive disposition might not want to look!  
 
After a most splendid tea Sway went out to try and score at more than 7 an over and sent out Mike Steadman and Steve Keen (yes honestly) and in fact Steadman hit 2 boundaries and with some extras the first wicket fell at 20 Steadman bowled for 12. Keen was finding some form after getting off the mark with his traditional paddle but a mix up saw Marshall, who had hit 9 off his first 3 balls, run out. Todd and Hannibal added some boundaries then got out and at 84 - 4 Dom Keen went out to bat with his father, but after scoring 10 he also suffered a run out and Keen senior's marathon knock came to an end in the 28th over with the total on 141 he was caught behind for a patient 31 which did include a couple of pleasant offside fours.
The innings faded away apart from an aggressive 45 (4x4 4x6) from Sam Harvey and the final score reached 164 when Hillyar became the final victim being bowled for a duck probably still suffering from an overload of pickled onions and hard boiled eggs, though not suffering as much as his beleagued colleagues or indeed anyone unfortunate enough to share his car for the trip home!