Almost a festival week of cricket at Weetwood started today, with Thursday the only blank day in the calender. However the weather conditions made it anything but a festival atmosphere. The biting north wind was the most serious problem added to which came sleet, hail and rain showers throughout the day. The only possible way to watch the action was to slip the car into one of the few spaces possible, normally firmly behind a locked gate.
Once ensconced in the warmth of the car the action in this eventful BUCS fifty overs a side one day match between Leeds/Bradford and Cardiff came thick and fast even if interrupted several times by the weather. The match did start on time at 12.30 despite a slight drizzle and the home side lost Bullen lbw early on. Then a good partnership between Andersson from Middlesex and the prolific Billy Root put on 59 runs. Root, who had made 85 for his club side Sheffield Collegiate on Saturday is already well into form and scored most of his runs in boundaries before being surprisingly bowled by Scriven for 34.
This brought in the captain Davis who batted through the remainder of the truncated innings to top score with 73. Andersson also made a confident 52 and Leeds/Bradford looked set for a big score when the weather intervened for the first time. A brief resumption saw the loss of Davis and as soon as he was out the heavens opened again and the innings was terminated at 184-5 after 30.4 overs. The Cardiff skipper Brand had the best bowling figures with his slow left arm spin taking 3-19 towards the end of the innings.
At this point I returned home to thaw out and cook my evening meal, returning about an hour later. Play had just re-started and Duckworth Lewis came into operation and we were told by the ever efficient Total Cricket Scorer that the revised target for Cardiff was 213 off 28 overs. They did not make a particularly good start losing opener Lawlor for one and when Billy Root came on to bowl with his innocuous looking spin he rather surprisingly took three wickets for twenty three in a very tidy six over spell.
The sun did appear towards the end of the game
The home side looked a bit short of bowling and when Brand was batting his fifty looked like giving Cardiff a chance, but the advent of offspinner McKendry changed all that with three wickets, all to excellent boundary catches. The other spinner, Hill, also bowled well with McKendry to the end and the game looked won with the scoreboard showing 32 runs still required with only two wickets left at the start of the last over.
The scoreboard shows 39 runs required in two overs
This is where the real confusion started as Cardiff were still going for the runs and it transpired later that the target of 32 had been reduced to 20 because of penalty runs awarded due to Leeds/Bradford's slow over rate. The scoreboard and Total Cricket Scorer could not cope with this so the handful of spectators left were oblivious to this new development. Cardiff went for two off the first ball which ended in a run out. The next two balls went for six and four so nine I think were required of the last three balls.
However in the gathering gloom the last wicket fell off either the fifth or sixth ball of the over with McKendry either taking a caught and bowled or effecting a run out.
Nearing the end of a very long day
Leeds had obviously won, but not by more than a single figure. A tweet by the University confirmed this but Total Cricket Scorer is still in a state of shock several hours after the end of the match, so the full detail will be confirmed later. A great game of cricket but it was cold, really hypothermic cold! The game finished at 7.45 p.m.
No comments:
Post a Comment