Well here I am again for another week, posting my views about the last couple of week’s performances. I must pass on my congratulations to all the players in both in the firsts and the seconds over the last two weeks. To win both the pre-season and first league game is a great effort and a good start to build a successful season on. After my first column I received an e-mail from an anonymous Dumbleton CC player. This e-mail was to inform me of some new nicknames which I will be using throughout this week’s column, I hope you understand them because I don’t really. Well enough beating around the bush lets dive right into the last two weeks performances.

With the first pre-season game being called off on account rain (believe it or not) the first time out in the middle was against Bourton. Andrew ‘midlife crisis’ Powell needs to practice his coin tossing ability to avoid being inserted on more wet wickets this season. I’m sure that there was no doubt in ‘ohhhhhhhhh Pete Boorman’s’ mind was that the pitch was perfectly fine to play on! Well what a great way to kick of the season with a 101 run stand between Nigel Stanton and Pete ‘bible basher’ Boorman. With Pete’s dislike of quick singles and not a lot of running, and Nigel trying to blaze every ball away to the boundary I’m sure that there was a lot of stand and deliver. Nick Holland didn’t seem to bother the scorer much (wonder what he's doing for a thigh pad now?) unlike Adam Stuart who showed in his class blasting 75 not out. Pete was eventually run out ‘tired’ (not sure how to put that in the scorebook) and finish on the devils number in cricket – 87. A great effort with the bat, requiring only 5 batters to put on 244 runs after the 40 overs.

The bowlers shares the duties around with a mixture of bowlers and a ‘part time roll the arm over’ getting through the overs and Bourton. Ben ‘you have been breezed’ Mchardie-Jones seemed to bowl quite tight only conceding 3 runs an over and collecting 2 wickets along the way. Paul ‘never brings tea money’ Engelbrecht picked up a couple of wickets but a touch on the expensive side conceding 4.4 runs per over.

Now for the awards from the first game. As much as I know this player won’t be happy with his award, but it’s one of the key players in the team who wasn’t mentioned in Simmo’s report. He is commonly known by his initials and now he has a few more to put on the end as Tom ‘sick note’ Green receives the first TFC (thanks for coming) award. The man of the match award goes to the man who takes in foreigners and their golf clubs when they leave. Hopefully he can go on from the devils number and get into triple figures this year, Pete Boorman. The player who is ‘running hot’ normally looks as if he should be on his death bed but if he can stay healthy this year he too will get into the triple figures - Adam Stuart. Finally the ‘gone missing’ award this week goes to Andrew ‘Midlife crisis’ Powell. The awards for this week may seem harsh but I could only go on what Simmo put on the website.

Now onto the first league game of the season. Not the best performance with the bat as only two players managed to reach double figures; Nick ‘Dutch’ Holland played an instrumental role in putting Dumbleton in the box seat. Smashing 11 fours (probably would have preferred some more) before he reached the nervous nineties and fell just 10 runs short 100. Tom ‘will marry Lottie’ Green managed as many runs as he has grains on his bat while Gareth Reid scored the same amount of runs as months that he has spent knocking in and preparing his bat. All in all a disappointing effort with the bat however I have every confidence that there will be a big turn out to training this week to finely perfect your individual games and come out next week and smash 300.

The effort by the bowlers was fantastic. Stone were right on the back foot from the start reeling at 31/5. Paul Engelbrecht finished with the figures of 49/5 off his 13 which is a great way to start the season. Tom Green would have given 110% effort as always and finished with 3 wickets from his 13 overs and no doubt spent the rest of the weekend icing his back. Steve Woolridge whose run up is now longer than Tom Greens managed to pick up one wicket during his tight spell of bowling. The last of the bowlers seems to be becoming a bit of a regular from the end of last season and the beginning of this season. Nigel Stanton bowled an extremely tight spell only conceding 2 runs an over and picked up a wicket. It is interesting to note that of the 4 bowlers, 3 of them were not born in the UK. That puts the figures this week at foreigners 7, locals 3 – foreigners win!!!

And it’s time for everyone’s favorite section – awards. This week’s TFC award was decided upon after receiving a call from a couple of drunks at 4.30am (England time), you will never guess who it was, but no it was not Boxy and Mappy! So with no further ado, for managing only 8 runs and dropping a catch the TFC goes to… Robin ‘batman’ Churchman, Our Man of the match award for the week goes to the one person who runs the weird warm up drills where you can only underarm the ball – Paul Engelbrecht. The running hot award goes to the player who literally would have been running hot after his innings of 90 – Nick Holland. And the final award of the week, the player who has gone missing this week is Gareth ‘greidy’ Reid.

Well that pretty much wraps me up for another week. Watching the IPL at the moment while typing this makes me miss cricket in England….a lot!!! Hope the weather holds out for the weekend and that juniors and all the matches scheduled go ahead. Once again any comment, questions, queries just e-mail me at carvs_jc@hotmail.com.

My final thought of the week which you should all take into the games this weekend….”back and across”

Cheerio,

Carvs