Our recent matches against the Woozlers seem to have been determined primarily by whether one of their strong batsmen comes off, and so it was delightful to hear that one of them, Sam Grimshaw, pulled the first ball of the match from Naveen Chouksey (2/23) straight into the hands of John Moore at square leg. Unfortunately, the Woozlers' middle order came to party, with Ed Hyde (first seen by us as a diminutive eight-year-old) smashing 73 (off 58 balls) and Ryan Bridger chipping in with 37 (off 30 balls). Both were at least dismissed, prodigal 'keeper Ed Fox taking a catch in his first match back from Doha and Eli Ellwood taking a stunner out on the boundary. It is perhaps revealing that none of bowlers conceded fewer than 5.00 per (six-ball) over, and in the end we were maybe lucky to be chasing "just" 138.
Given that five our our top order were dismissed for 5 or less, it might sound like our innings was a disaster, and it might have been but for the efforts of Eli Ellwood and Dave Norman. Eli held things together, finishing up on 49* off 54 balls, and Dave was motoring, having gotten to his half-century off just 28 balls. With the score at 103/5 after 15 overs we needed just 36 from 30 and were surely winning. But then Dave, having been beaten by a good leggie, got his stud caught in the pitch as he went to regain his ground and so was stumped (for 54 off 33 balls) with his foot stuck on, but not behind, the line. John Young (4 off 7 balls) and Andy Owen (5* off 5 balls) tried, along with Eli, to get us over the line, but we got more than 6 runs from only one of our final overs and ended up comfortably short of our target.
