Sunday 18th June 2023
West End Esher 164-9 (35 overs)
SCCC 81-4 (15.1 overs)
35 over match abandoned due to rain
West End Esher won the toss
Scorecard
Daddy Grinders (expert meteorologist) writes:
One week on from what is the now annual heat fest at Ripley, a youthful Cryptic XI turned up at West End Esher under leaden skies.
The oppo wanted to play a T20 game as ‘it will be raining at 5:00’. We declined and then lost the toss and stepped onto the Green to start our 35 overs.
Extremely Senior pro Grinders started off uphill into the breeze 🙁 with Young Joe Witt sharing the new ball.
Jimmy G took a blinder at point to see off one of the openers. Seeckts Junior kept up the family tradition by dropping one in the office.
Jimmy’s reward was to be thrown the ball as first change. After suffering a drop off his first ball he bowled beautifully to claim 2 for 15 off his 7, one the first of 3 catches by Archie Goss.
Sidwell mixed it up to claim a three-fer on debut and Skipper Ed benefited what turned out to a rather painful catch by Hugs, landing as he did on the inhaler he had in his pocket. Archie G discarded his knee brace Forest Gump style and and bowled with some pace, but no reward.
Grinders Senior returned to miss out on another bunny hat-trick, thwarted by Miss Old, who three years previously had carted him into the pond.
So we trudged off for another welcome lovely tea needing to chase 164.
Our other debutant Pranay showed he was a better bat than bowler or catcher (welcome to harsh Cryptics reviews Pranay) . He lofted some lovely drives over the infield to race to 39 before falling in rather unfortunate circumstances, caught at slip. But not before Toby, Ed and Roland had fallen to some impressive swing bowling from Miss Old.
Ricky the Duck was delighted to be finally packing his suitcase to go off to Clapham with Ed. Ed was even more delighted 10 minutes later as he was passing Ricky onto Roland.
At 5pm it did indeed begin to rain, leaving Archie G and Henry W the task off keeping us above the Ricky Worth-Lewis score. This they did before all walked off after 15.1 overs with Cryptics on 81 for 4.
Stats Footnote: Toby became the 18th (and by far the youngest) Cryptic to pass 1000 runs.