Rams suffer back-to-back league defeats
Saturday 1st June did not prove to be glorious for the Rams
Having lost the toss, the Acre Bottom boys were asked to field against a talented but unpredictable Crompton side.
The match was played on the well-worn pitch used the previous evening. We all know how games can change on a particular incident and such a pivotal moment occurred with the oppositions score on 11. Matt Burdaky had just removed opener Rigby caught and bowled with a delivery that stopped on him. The next over Jack Wynn produced a similar delivery to the dangerous Mohammed Jamal. The ball spooned up and Jack dived to his right and held the catch cleanly until his elbow hit the floor and the ball spilled out. This seemed to be the catalyst for Jamal to tee off and in company with sub professional Bisisto, ably assisted by light rain, which allowed the ball to skid through at a better pace the pair set about putting the Rams attack to the sword. Runs flowed freely as both men smashed the loose ball and ran brilliantly between the wickets. The Rammy cause was not helped by losing the Bird with a hamstring injury and Dan Pyke only able to bowl one ball with a groin strain. When Jamal was dismissed with the score on 119 the game had been set up for Crompton. In fairness to the Aussie Basisto he took full advantage of the situation and played a superb chanceless innings finishing unbeaten on 128 as the opposition posted a massive 271for 6 with some lusty hitting coming from the middle order amateurs.
To achieve victory the Rams had to perform a record-breaking chase on the Acre Bottom ground, an awesome task. Once again, we had a great start with 42 on the board in no time before Tom Parton was well caught in the covers. One run later, JJ Fielding, who had played gloriously for 30 runs was out to an injudicious shot when he should really have left the ball. This became a trend as all our batsmen played themselves in in quick style before falling to poor strokes, the only exception being Simon Hanson who got a ‘roughie’. Our innings came to an end with a score of 208 on the board. As John Fielding commented that score would have been enough to chase down and win 98% of games on our ground over the last 10 years. This was a poor performance by the Rams, particularly in the field with our heads going down as the opposition piled on the runs.
Hopefully next week will see an improved performance.