Match Reports - Brockley II vs Maldon IV - 17 May 2008 (home)
Brockley 217 for 7
Fisher 96, Brame 55, T. Fenner 23
Maldon 74 all out
Brame 3-12, Smart 4-9, S. Fenner 3-11
Last week I drove to Brockley on a stunning spring day full of joyful optimism, yesterday I had only managed to fit one of my new contact lenses, my right eye was sore, it was cold, the roads were wet, it was drizzling and I was captaining a young team that had lost four games in a row. My mood on arrival was decidedly bad tempered and wasn’t improved by losing the toss and incessant gun fire of what sounded like a rerun of Custer’s last stand coming from a neighbouring field. Gun fire and cricket are as compatible as Sister Teresa and Hitler! I had a head ache. Was it the gun fire or my sore eye?
Out in the first over meant a sentence of an afternoons umpiring, pushing pitch covers back and forth in the rain and watching the youngsters once again struggle to make a decent score. I even envied Blackledege who after his somewhat distracted performance of last Saturday had decided that the grass was greener at Culford School where he was captaining the dads against the boys; I hoped he wouldn’t get bored!
How wrong could I have been! Fisher who is in an advanced state of senile decay grasped the opportunity of opening the innings in Blackledge’s absence and in a heady display of positive batting and almost miraculous reserves of stamina scored a truly amazing and marvellous 96. His innings lasted to the last over and his batting was a revelation, it will be a brave captain who demotes him in the order.
Dennis Fisher - 96 runs |
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Young Brame continued his dramatic improvement; his first three scoring shots were 4.4.6 and he went on to hit an aggressive 55; would his mum would have enjoyed the innings as much as me? Brame seems to specialise in hitting head high beamers for 4 where as Martin, making his seasons debut,and is somewhat more experienced than Brame, seemed more troubled. Tom Fenner, batting too low in the order at 7, proved to everyone not least himself that he is a fine timer of the ball with lots of positive attacking shots.
Opening the bowling for Brockley, Kimber again bowled with pace. He has worked very hard on his all round cricket, his fielding has improved beyond recognition and if he can just bowl a little straighter the wickets will come. The wicket taking bowlers however were Smart, Brame and Steve Fenner who was, at 14, making his senior club debut. Steve, if he can find time for cricket in his busy sporting life will become an outstanding player both with bat and ball. It is reassuring for me to have the experience of Smart o call upon; his guile as a slow bowler was once again evident and his subtle change of pace bought him a number of his four wickets.
After such a run of heavy defeats the mood in the club house after the match was little short of euphoric; young Brame (it was his dad) and Fisher bought the mandatory jugs of ale and even old JR, who had caught a hard catch standing up to the wicket was almost jolly. To celebrate this historic win JR will be submitting his own version of the match to the sports pages of the BFP.
Captains man of the match? Smart bowled with great skill whilst young Brame once again had a encouragingly good all round game but for his stylish display of batting, his best ever innings for the club; for the second week running the award goes to Dennis Fisher.
It has been suggested that in addition to the Man of the Match award the vice captain should make, for each of our matches (and because he likes champagne so much) a “Champagne moment Award” and as he was elsewhere I'll make the first of his awards to Bone for his wonderful match winning boundary catch.
Special thanks to those who have organised teas so far this season. They have all been superb; thank you.
Phil Reed | | |
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