Match Report Game 2 v Gloucestershire Over Over 70’s 

The match was played at Stroud Cricket Club’s home ground. Another old English club but this time only established in 1850. Their ground is right next to the Stroudwater Canal and the Frome river so keeping their outfield green and well watered was not an issue for them. We helped on the day by bringing showers with us that eventually terminated the match half way though their innings.

The match started like the first one with Roger being offered the choice to bat or bowl and he chose to bat first again. With injuries taking their toll on the team we had a new line up and a new opening combination of Tony Penny and  Paul Facoory. Those 2 added 25 runs for the first wicket before Hamish entered the fray. After a circumspect start Hamish took off from where he’d left off at bath smashing 16 4’s and one 6 for a 57 ball 84. An un-official player of the day innings at a 147 strike rate that only lasted 80 minutes but left several bowlers with bruised runs per over rates. When Paul was bowled by a great delivery for 31 Bevin Guthrie entered the arena and he and Hamish ramped up the action as they had done at Bath 2 days before.

The departure of Hamish with the score at 151 brought in Terry O’Laughlan and he and Bevin pushed the score along with lots of 1’s and 2’s. The Gloucestershire captain had sent all of the players he could out to the fence during Hamish’s onslaught and never brought them back in again for the rest of the match. This partnership took us into the 220 mark until Bevin retired after his second  consecutive 50 not out. So still no average for him yet.

The next batters did their best against the spread out field taking the score through to 248. It was more runs than the home side had expected or hoped  to concede according to some comments after the match. Roger joined Hamish in belting a 6 but his wash safely over the fielders. Hamish had his one dropped on the boundary and then spilled over the rope. It was a very good score against one of the top 5 over 70 county teams who had a good bowling line up playing on a wicket that was offering some assistance to bowlers.

After a short lunch break we went out to bowl against a confident batting line up including the England over 70’s captain, John Evan’s, and 2 players we will meet again in the invitational 11 at Hagley Hall on Thursday.

The home team got off to a good start being offered a few juicy full tosses and hitting the ball hard. Anything through the inner ring was off and into the boundary. The second team of Morris Dawson and Sunitha Goonetilleke bowled well in tandem and slowed down their scoring rate before Morris picked up the first and only wicket before the first break for rain. 

We returned to the field after the first shower and got the match through into the 21st over slowly pegging back their run rate but then the rains returned, stopped for a bit, then returned finally to end the match.

The result on the score sheets was match abandoned but unofficially the DLS calculations after 20.4 overs had NZ ahead at that point. So we can claim a victory of sorts and are at least undefeated so far on the tour. The day claimed a few more victims with currently only 12 out of the 17 fit to play. Hopefully one or 2 will be ok by tomorrow. 

There was a lot of the match still to play out before the rain interrupted play and both sides were probably confident that they could have won the game. They had some good batters and we had our spinners about to come into action so we felt we were in a good position also.

It was a learning experience for us too and hopefully we will be better for the experience.

Chris East