Marress v Crow Road, 04/08/2007

Marress v Crow Road
WDCU Div 5, Irvine, 04/08/2007

Crow Road won toss and elected to field

Marress
Sharp b Roy 4
* M Ingram lbw b Smillie 106
Cooney b Roy 0
Conway c Rixon b Alcock 2
D Ingram b Rixon 4
Mudunuri b Alcock 0
Fernando c and b Alcock 0
Mitchell c Miller b Alcock 0
McMeeking lbw b Rixon 42
Taylor b Rixon 15
# Ram not out 0
Extras 45
Total (all out, 46.2 ovs) 218

Khan 11-3-39-0, Roy 9-1-28-2, Alcock 8-0-60-4,
Rixon 7.2-2-32-3, Smillie 9-1-30-1, Bilsland 2-0-22-0

Crow Road
S Alcock c Conway b D Ingram 17
* A Rixon b Mudunuri 29
C Bilsland b Mudunuri 2
# G Semple b D Ingram 3
I Roy c Ram b D Ingram 11
A Khan b Sharp 4
C Dickson b Mudunuri 28
I Miller not out 2
R Allen c Conway b Mudunuri 0
L McDermid not out 0
Extras 32
Total (8 wkts, 53 ovs) 128
G Smillie did not bat

M Ingram 15-6-32-0, Conway 9-3-19-0, Mudunuri 12-6-10-4,
D Ingram 7-3-19-3, Sharp 5-0-20-1, Taylor 2-0-10-0,
Cooney 3-1-6-0

Match drawn
Marress 19 pts, Crow Road 8 pts

Match Report

For the second week running a host of absences left Crow Road seriously weakened, but unlike last week’s capitulation to table-topping Home Park, Saturday’s visit to wooden spoon candidates Marress resulted in a gutsy draw. With a bowling attack significantly depleted even compared to last week, it was a superb early effort from Crow Road to have the home side at 95-7. Unfortunately the bowlers then lost their way and allowed Marress to reach 218, but the inexperienced batting line-up responded admirably and stuck it out for 53 overs to escape with a draw.

Rixon won an important toss and sent Marress in to bat on Irvine’s famously uneven pitch, choosing to open the bowling with Ali Khan and Iain “Jo” Roy. Both made tidy starts, keeping the run rate down to 2, and the pressure soon told as Jo made a double breakthrough, bowling Sharp and Cooney in consecutive overs. When he reached his 7 over limit as a U18, Steve-o came on and offered the batsmen no respite, with his left-arm line extracting some particularly unusual bounce from the pitch. Rixon responded by positioning himself at short square leg and this plan paid off almost straight away as Conway could only fend a rising delivery into his hands.

Ali took a break after 10 economical overs and was replaced by Rixon, who soon got among the wickets when the Marress No. 5 played around the line of one and was bowled. Steve-o then charged through the rest of the middle order, bowling Chatanya with a jaffer, plucking a sharp caught and bowled chance out of the air and finally inducing their No. 8 to pick out Iain at mid off. At the other end, however, the Marress captain Ingram was now well set and had started to punish Steve-o’s bowling as his team-mates fell around him, although he was extremely lucky to survive an lbw shout when hit on the full on off stump.

Ingram was joined by McMeeking at No. 9, and although he only had one shot – the one you usually associate with golf – it immediately proved effective as he smeared a couple of loose balls to the boundary to get off the mark. It was at this point that a number of things started to go wrong for Crow Road. The fielding got slacker, the field placement got a bit confused and most of all, the bowlers, who had all been performing well up to this point, lost their accuracy completely. Rixon bowled too short, Jo too wide, Ali somewhat spoiled his figures with a 12-ball, 16-run comeback over and only Smillie, brought on to bowl cutters despite his broken finger, maintained any kind of control.

Ingram’s scoring slowed up as he neared his century, but after he reached the landmark with a lofted drive for 3, some more free hitting by McMeeking took their 8th wicket partnership past 100. Then, 70-odd runs after he could have been given out, Ingram was finally adjudged lbw to Smillie and after brief resistance from the Marress No. 10, Rixon wound up the innings soon after. The final score of 218 was well above par considering the state of the wicket, and the fact that only three Marress batsmen scored more than 4 emphasised how difficult it was to get settled in. This was exactly what Crow Road’s top order would have to do, however, to stand any chance of chasing the target or batting out the 53 overs that remained.

Steve-o and Rixon made a solid start but in between every ball were on the receiving end of chat that could best be described as odd. Apparently Steve-o was a “flower” who the Marress bowlers needed to “sprinkle some seed on”, and if this wasn’t homo-erotic enough, there was also some indecent exposure in one of the overs when Steve-o found himself facing two balls more than he would have expected. It might have helped Marress if they’d concentrated more on their bowling and less on their banter as the opening partnership moved past 50 without too much trouble, the highlight being a glorious cut for 4 by Steve-o and the lowlight a costly drop by their keeper after Rixon edged one straight up in the air.

The first wicket fell in the 20th over when Chatanya, who routed Crow Road back in June, bowled Rixon with one that stayed lower than he’d expected. Vidal came in at No. 3 to keep things steady and did his job well, seeing off 6 tricky overs before he too was bowled. Meanwhile, Craig Dickson and Ross Purdon had showed up to spectate and, as Crow Road had only arrived with 10 players, there seemed no reason why one of them couldn’t bat. The idea was for Dickson to come in at No. 4 but the Marress captain asked for the rulebook to be consulted first and while this was done, Semple was sent out to the middle instead.

Fresh from a highly impressive wicket-keeping debut, Semple provided more solid support for Steve-o who by this stage had stopped scoring altogether – at one point managing just 2 runs off 47 balls. It was clear by now that winning the game was out of the question, but when Semple was unluckily bowled when the ball rolled back off his bat onto the stumps, Jo, Ali and Dickson (whose appearance didn’t seem to break any rules) were sent in at 5, 6 and 7 to try and up the scoring rate and collect some extra bonus points. Jo hit some lusty blows in his innings of 11, but soon became part of a middle order collapse triggered when Steve-o’s epic 130 minute, 109 ball 17 ended with an edge to slip. Jo then top edged a pull to a ball that bounced extravagantly and finally Ali, who had just smashed a superb off drive for 4, was bowled by a full toss. 81-3 had become 87-6 and, with 13 overs remaining, Crow Road were staring down the barrel.

Thankfully the 7th wicket pair had other ideas and put together a crucial partnership of 40. The two innings could hardly have been more different – Iain playing stonewall defence while Dickson flayed the bowling all over the park. Mixing hugely powerful shots with some sensible blocks, Dickson carried the score to 127 (and 2 extra bonus points) before he was bowled with 14 balls remaining. It was edge-of-the-seat stuff now and got even tenser when young Robert Allen became Chatanya’s 4th victim two balls later (giving Chatanya bowling figures of 26.2-10-31-11 against Crow Road this season). Two overs and two wickets remained though it was still unclear if Smillie would risk his broken finger to bat if required. Iain escaped one catchable chance to survive the 99th over, at which point Smillie returned from his umpiring stint in the middle to pad up, probably prudent given that it was Liam McDermid now on strike to the last six deliveries. Liam had been calm as he walked to the crease but his team-mates certainly weren’t after he popped the first ball straight to a close fielder who crucially put it down. After dead-batting the next ball away, he ran a leg-bye to bring Iain on strike, and Iain coolly saw out the rest of the over to confirm the draw.

Considering the 9.5 players that we travelled to Irvine with today, this represented a fine result. Apart from the 15-over spell late in their innings where everything seemed to go wrong, all our players performed near the top of their game, which was the only way we were ever going to avoid defeat. Special mentions must go to Steve-o for a strong all-round performance and to Dickson for a very timely, match-saving arrival, but everyone contributed something positive towards the result. Next week, things should be back to normality as a number of regulars return for the Scotindians/Hillend double header, but to all the not-so-regulars who’ve turned out for the team in either or both of the last two matches, I have to say a big thank you. Just fulfilling the fixtures was a big achievement, but the performance today was a particular credit to all involved.