Wednesday night saw a tense, low-scoring match between Southend-on-Sea 'B' and Rayleigh Fairview in a title clash for Southend Indoor Cricket League Division 1.
Prior to the match, SOSCC were sitting at the top of the table with 5 wins from 5 fixtures, with Rayleigh Fairview 8 points behind and having lost just the one match.
Previously we'd put in solid performances with the bat throughout the winter, passing 140 runs on 3 occasions, and one of those in a reduced 10-over match (instead of the usual 12). As such our skipper, Gilroy, really only had one objective to justify his place in the side, and that was to win the toss.
Five minutes later we were padding-up and looking forward to batting Rayleigh out of contention - with our points advantage we could pick-up bonus batting points, lose the game and still finish as division winners. And then we just fell apart with the bat...
Rayleigh bowled a mixed bag, but everything that wasn't hit cleanly simply went straight to hand. The opposition took their chances well and we were starting to bitch amongst ourselves about bottling it, and folding when it really counts.
We failed to even bat out the overs and trudged off on 64 All Out, and suffice to say that Rayleigh were in the box seat.
Gilroy changed the usual bowling order around, and opened with Bells & Gridley. And they kept it really tight, with excellent fielding all round from our side, we managed to restrict them to only a few meager runs each over. Then the wickets started to fall. Both Gilroy and Bells held on to some sharp chances which turned the pressure back onto Rayleigh and we began to sense that we could pull it out of the bag.
Tom & myself bowled the last 4 overs between us, and despite some cleanly hit sixes, we held our nerve and let the recently-replaced ball swing in and do the damage. I picked up the last three wickets and suddenly we had bowled them out for 55 to finish undefeated top of the table.
Great game.
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