A great game against a very good side

I will start tonight's report with a couple of thank you's.

Firstly to Musa for stepping in at the very last minute following Jude suffering another injury and then personally to Ian for stepping in and umpiring the first innings, such a huge help.

So to the match, a very close match against a very good and motivated Gravesend side. Charl won the toss and decided to bat first, very unusually this season we got off to a slow start losing Santosh early, but Artharva, although not being at his fluent best, retired not out yet again. We lost run machine Louie to a very sharp caught and bowled, but then the power of our middle order batting took control, Charl with a belligerent 25 retired, then Suban and Bobby scampering and hitting raised our total to a respectable 142.

Gravesend started with some hitting of there own, but a great opening and hostile spell from Alfie regained some sort of control. Unusually our spin twins of Louie and Charl were taken on and skipper took the difficult decision to take them both out of the attack and to turn to the quick spin of Arnav and the pace of Tommy.

Its quite difficult to explain but regardless of what the boys tried the Gravesend batsmen always seemed to smuggle a boundary an over and after 15 overs they were well in the driving seat with the game at there mercy.

With the final 3 overs to go Gravesend required 24 to win, back came Bobby with a brilliant 18th over taking a wicket and only conceeding 3 runs, outstanding, then it was Tommys turn, 19th over, 1 wicket, 1 Run Out and only going for 1 run, again brilliant, the final over fell to the outstanding Alfie, 5 runs from the over and we win by 11.

I have to say that in my opinion this was Alfies finest spell this season, he bowled with pace and accuracy and although he didnt take a wicket his control and pace were incredible.

I will finish by saying that being the captain is very often a thankless task and making tough decisions can be very difficult. I think Charl did a brilliant job tonight and I was hugely impressed with his cricketing skill and mature way he handled the situations. Good work.

If we only we could catch a ball it would make things so much easier and stop me ageing another 5 years each week.
Again thank you for your amazing support and positivity you instill in the boys, as a group of players and supporters you make a great team