|
Broadway and Horton
lost to Doctors
Finding the venue could be tricky. You need to turn R to Ashill off the
Ilminster road out of Taunton; passing The Square and Compass public
house on the L, take the second left turning afterwards.
Enough of us found the Ground by the appointed time to win the toss and get
batting on a lovely evening with a very large dry pitch, cracked and
rabbit-worn in places. Rob Adcock and John Ogle scored methodically in
1’s and 4’s at 5 an over, with Ogle retiring on 25 and Adcock shortly after
on 27. This let in Hugh Ogle who fired rapidly around the wicket including
one fine 6 over long-on before he too retired on 27. His mate, Ed Hunt,
was unlucky to be caught for 5, and then the man-of-the-match Dicky Budd
smote 21 before also falling to a well-taken catch. Graham Ferguson
unaccountably and uncharacteristically was clean-bowled first ball by the
accurate seamer John Pike, leaving Matt Bere and Andrew Guppy to rattle up 21
and 19 respectively by the end of 20 overs (in August!) for a grand total of
166, seemingly plenty. However,
after the early loss of Andrews to a fine ball from Sedge Seymour who opened
from the ditch-end, Lowman and Hilton rattled up 48 off 5 overs before the
former fell once again to the accurate spin of Sedge who finished with 4
wickets (including 2 stumpings by lightning Ferguson) for 28, their batsmen
continued to score quickly. Will Bere bowled well but without success
from the road-end, followed by Ed Hunt who contributed 2 accurate
overs. Jeremy Budd (3-1-26) had a wicket in his second over when his
son Dickie took a fantastic running catch at full stretch at deep cover. In
the final chase 4 of their batsmen were run out, three of them by superbly
accurate throws from Dickie, and a fifth could have been added from a fine
throw by Hugh Ogle which unfortunately the bowler couldn’t gather. Andrew
Guppy (3-0-21) and the ever-accurate Matt Bere (3-2-17) restricted their
scoring, and Hugh Ogle (3-0-26) who was taken to task in his first over came
back to bowl a tight final over in the gloaming. Docs made a tactical
error by taking the 10th wicket, allowing the dangerous Pike, who had earlier
retired on 27, to return for the final assault. However, needing 4 for
victory off the last ball, and batsmen and fielders fumbling for the ball in
the dark, he mis-cued an attempted heave, leaving Doctors victors by the
narrowest of margins in a tense and fitting finale. People felt
we should continue with this fixture. |
