4th September 2010 - Match Reports.

With one of their youngest sides of the season bolstered by the return of Andy Wheeler and Adam Greaves from their Bank Holiday Monday win over Pedmore, the Green Second eleven travelled north to face second place Stourbridge on Saturday. Winning the toss, home skipper Jones elected to bat first on a tired looking track and found his side up against it from the outset.

Returning from holiday, Tom Banks (9-3-17-3) shared the new cherry with Brad Adams (9-3-33-0) and both bowled excellently making the batsmen work hard on the slow surface. Tom Clack (6-0-32-1) replaced a flagging Adams and made the batsmen work hard whilst Ryan Scullion (3-24-0), who struggled with his run-up, found the going somewhat trickier. Jack Macintosh (7-3-12-2) replaced Scullion and picked up two quick wickets with his excellent lines to reduce the home side to 78-5 at the halfway stage. Donning the wicket-keeping gauntlets for the first time in 6 years Skipper Judd Doughty had a decent game behind the stumps only conceding 9 byes in the innings and putting pressure on the batsmen whilst stood up to the stumps. The spin option of Dan Hunt (4-0-10-1) was trialled before Georgia Hennessy (5-2-14-0) and then Jack Cullity (7-3-18-3) had a bowl and the latter’s slightly nippier pace made scoring runs even harder, especially when he removed 3 decent batsmen in very quick succession to bring the innings to its knees at 125-9. Not for the first time this season however the Green relaxed too soon and before they knew it the last pairing managed to find just shy of 50 precious runs before they ran out of overs on 173-9 – a challenging score on slow, low, two-paced wicket.

In reply Banks (0) paired with Wheeler (56 off 36) in an attempt to knock off the total. Tom Clack (0), batting at three was bowled without troubling the scorers bringing the veteran Adam Greaves (38) to the crease with a mountain to climb. Greaves and Wheeler combined well to add to the total before Wheeler perished to the medium pace of Jeavons. Doughty, nursing sore legs and fingers after keeping wicket hobbled to the crease and found runs very hard to come by (5 off 45) before hitting a long hop to point. Scullion (28) and Cullity (11) gave the innings a real boost and took the total past the 125 bonus points before Cullity and then Scullion fell. Adams (4) also perished before Macintosh (14) Hennessy edged the total ever so close to the winning total with some ambitious shots before both finally fell leaving Hunt stranded on 0 not out and the score on 169 all out.

On reflection the home side scored 50 runs too many and the Green top order batsmen failed to take enough responsibility for their wickets which placed too much pressure on the lower order who managed to bail the team out on Monday but were unfortunately unable to do so in this game. The lower order should feel no guilt, and did a sound job all things considered. Now we know we will be playing Birmingham League cricket next term those who class themselves as batsmen must be capable of working hard to score their runs away from the sanctuary of North End Lane.