One Day Competition - President Cardinals vs East Shirley Blue, Sydenham Park #1, Presidents, 19th October 2013
A winning 4pm finish on the day of an All Black test match is always a good day. In truth we had always expected to win this match the moment that the team list was published, but it's cricket we're playing here and you never know for sure.
Unfortunately for the game we lost the toss and Easts elected to bat on a good looking Sydenham no. 1, be it showing a touch of early season "cover sweat" that kept the odd ball low. Unfortunate because East succumbed early and never really got into the game such that a small run chase always looked likely fairly early on into their innings. And that wasn't surprising considering that we had five bowlers who could have equal claims on the opening bowling duties, as it turned out Sam was only good enough for first change, although perhaps the Souvlaki that he was still in the process of downing as he walked out onto the field may have contributed to that decision.
That said, after Jules had taken out East's best bat in Nick Cottam, Sam then came on, and as he does so often, took out the next three for very little and ensured that only a small total was in the offering from that point onwards. All the bowlers did the job with Sam's 3/10 the standout, but Fergus took out two, and all the others barring Ralphy got one each. Not that the skipper's four runs off 5 overs was anything other than extremely useful.
So chasing 86 with the batting side we had on a pretty good wicket should never have been a struggle, and so it proved. The reply was totally dominated by one of our "bowlers" Wildy who had used a suspect groin as an excuse not to bowl and ensured that he got to open the batting. When he celebrated his first 50 since the 1990's we had 67 on the board evidencing how dominant he had been. Three sixes in one over early on in the piece asserted a dominance that was maintained until the end with Geoff still there on 19* ensuring that the innings was nursed through to the right result.
So a good solid result and now desperately looking for chance to play one of the top four side next week..
Man of the Match - Anthony Wild
Check out the scorecard from the game.