OQs vs. School 1st XI Cricket

Sunday, 1st August 2010

What a thrilling game of cricket the Old Boys had this summer with the match ending in a nail biting tie.

The game began slowly with the school winning the toss and selecting to bat first knowing that the ever increasing hangovers of the old boys would be the comedy value of the morning’s play. With Si Stewart charging in from the top-end bowling well and the ever so quiet Rob Dickins happy to take the new ball and strain up the hill….promises that I had broken telling him he could bowl down the hill the night before.

The school got off to a solid start with reaching the 100 mark with the loss of only 1 wicket, the Old Boys now starting to struggle (physically and mentally), even with the surprise turn-out of ex-strike bowler, the “henched” Ollie Stewart as he had only returned from his 8 month travels that week, Thanks For Coming Ollie. So ironically the bowling turned to the spin of Ben Orr and Ben Ackland who bowled pretty much for the rest of the innings, they both took wickets and slowed the run rate right down. However wickets would have been easier to come by if catches were held, Ed Kodabandaloo the major contributor of this. But not to worry….Ed made it up with the bat later.

As we came off at the declaration of 284-9, the school seem confident and the Old Boys just wanted a drink. But complacency seems to be a trait of recent school teams and this as we know gets them into trouble.

With an inspiring team-talk and a serious top order batting line up including the prolific Andrew Zendra at 3, the confidence increased so we went for a stroll! However, things never go as planned and having Ed Kodabandaloo run-out without facing by the Irish one, wickets tumbled consecutively. A classy 70 by Richard Catchpole partnered by Si Nixon who scored his highest ever of 68 made the school think about what they had to do! This pulled us into the game and when he was joined by Fraser C-W runs flowed. He unluckily fell which brought Dickins to the crease….a very mature, gracious knock put the Old Boys right into the game, but we were running out of batsmen. Doutch and Ollie Stewart 10 & 11 respectively thought we had possibly done enough….but you know what happens next.

Doutch joined the chatting Dickins at the crease with 15 overs to go with about 60 runs required, runs were hard to come by and it was all about strike rotation. Got down to the last over with 2 needed off the last ball to win….pushed down the ground, miss-field, dive, RUN-OUT! Never I put a massive dive in and was given the finger. The speculation was that the young fielder had already knocked-off the bails without the ball in hand, but hey-ho that’s Cricket.

End in a tie.

Would like to thank everyone who was involved organising the weekend and Lewis Nurcombe (Social Secretary) for the hospitality once again. Next year will be even bigger hopefully so please keep an eye on facebook as an event will be arranged and a weekend dedicated to the occasion.

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