Fillongley Cricket Club

A pretty comprehensive tonking from Solihull Blossomfield this afternoon. They are now third, ten behind Highway and in with a good chance of a return to the Birmingham League.

We won the toss and batted, which should have been OK given we had our strongest batting line up today. At the start we were scoring quickly due mostly to generous donations of extras, but a sequence of dismissals got us to a pretty catastrophic 120-7 at drinks. Only Pro and Barbs got in, and they both went to rash shots. Everybody else seemed to face a couple of overs then get bowled. To put it in context Junior and SB added 18 after tea, and both faced more balls than any of our front line bats, Pro excepted. JC had moved to plan B on the wicket after rain, and there was variable bounce, but we can’t use that as an excuse. For Solihull I thought Harvey Satterthwaite was impressive again. He is as quick as anyone in this league and has been a handful in both of our games against Solihull.

Thoughts were that if the wicket was playing up and we could get a couple of early wickets we might get ourselves back in it. The word was that they were batsmen short today. No chance though. Altaf and Bashir were got the score to 50 before tea with some sensible positive batting. When they were out the next two looked equally composed, and numbers 5 and 6 looked pretty good as well.

Seconds won at Corley. JK took 5-11, then 50s for Michael Gales and Dan Howells to land the 24 points. Congratulations to Michael on getting a first in Sports Journalism. Also a return from Africa for Binga. I’m told his first ball was pukka but the rest were pies!