Match Report Ramsbottom 1st XI v Walsden 1st XI – 11 June 2022
WCC 277 for 5 (50 overs) RCC 84 all out (23 overs)
Scorecard here
Blown away by Gales at Walsden
The Rams suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the previously out of form Walsden side who were buoyed by outstanding performances by the Gale brothers with Josh in particular scoring a fine century and then taking 5 wickets for two runs with the ball.
A defeat by 193 runs is an embarrassment particularly on what looked an excellent deck at what is a small ground. Walsden play the game hard and are a raucous outfit when fielding and this seemed to have a completely intimidating effect on our middle to latter order batsmen as we slipped from 80 for 3 to 84 all out. The batsmen looked like stunned rabbits in front of headlights as we had five failing to trouble the scorers, of which four were clean bowled. The bowling was good and straight but in no way should have caused such a calamitous collapse.
Going back to the start of the game Rammy won the toss and with the weather threatening inserted the opposition. We got an early breakthrough when Grimmy trapped Nick Barker LBW for a duck before a short rain interruption took us off the field. Only one over was lost and on the first ball following the resumption Jake had Majid Kahn caught behind. This brought the Walsden sub pro Zohaib Kahn to the wicket. Off the first ball he received he literally knocked the cover off it and was caught behind. Everybody on the ground heard the noise with even members of the Walsden team and his batting colleague Josh Gale later acknowledging he hit it but somehow umpire Lees gave it not out. That would have made the score 24 for 3 and although not necessarily having any bearing on the game would certainly have put an element of doubt in the minds of the incoming batsmen. To say the the score had reached 165 before we secured the next wicket, that of Josh Gale who was brilliantly caught on the boundary by Denty for a magnificent 103, tells its own story.
From then on Joe Gale took on the role his brother had started and he smashed a 30 ball half century which included 6 maximums as the home piled up a total of 277 off 48 overs, a formidable target to chase.
With the exception of Dan Pyke and Jake Walker the Rammy bowling was poor with too much width and in the slot bowling which was meat and drink for the hard hitting opposition batting. On a positive note our ground fielding was good and certainly saved us conceding a lot more runs.
Chasing down 278 to win was always going to be tough but in fairness we made a good start putting on 35 in quickish time before losing Jonny Dack for 13. Grimmy joined Tom Parton at the wicket and the pair looked in total control taking the score to 67 before Tom fell in freak manner. Facing spinner Islam Grimmy smashed one back at the bowler like an exocet missile. In an attempt at self preservation the bowler tried to jump out of the way only for ball to clip his boot and deflect onto the wicket with Tom caught out of his ground. These thing happen when you are struggling and the effect it had on the Rams was plain see with the collapse that followed.
As a result of this defeat we slip to the bottom of the league. We have shown that we are capable of bouncing back and it appears to be one of those years where anybody can beat any other side, as shown by Middleton (who we thrashed the previous week) who turned over Todmorden on the weekend.
This coming weekend is the most crucial so far in the season. Several players need to up their game for the challenge as we cannot be reliant on 3 or 4 batsmen to see us through every week.
Amateur Man of the Match – Tom Parton who looked in good nick until his fluke dismissal.
