Sunday 7th August 2022
Wick had the pleasure of visiting Newbridge fields on a glorious sunny Sunday Afternoon. Talk prior to the match was about the Premiership football season starting and the Wick CC fantasy football league and who did everyone go with upfront Haaland or Kane. Wick were shorn of a player due to Andy having been ‘volunteered’ to do a family pickup from Heathrow. So, if anyone from Wick needs an airport transport service Andy’s cabs are more than happy to provide an efficient service. This left us a player down however Amal stepped up to make it 11, despite moving house this weekend. So apologies to Amal’s family on behalf of the cricket club for taking him away, during what is commonly known as one of the most stressful experiences of life .. oops!! let’s just hope they have unpacked the sofa so Amal has somewhere to sleep for a few nights!!!
Skipper Rob won the toss and elected to bat which went down well with the team, saving a long haul in the field on a sweltering hot day. We had the pleasure of welcoming home Knowsley (Lee Knowles) who had only flown back to Wales from Vietnam the previous day and was almost called upon to play despite severe jet lag. Thankfully for Lee we had 11 and he could just relax on the boundary and take in the Wick innings which started with Skipper Rob & Steve opening the batting. Steve was hoping to have better luck with the bat than he did with Llantwit when getting run out without facing a ball, no worries there Steve the skipper isn’t renowned for running quick singles. The lads got us off to a solid start, there were cheers on the side-lines when we witnessed something that was quite astonishing, forget seeing Big foot or the Loch Ness monster, the skipper ran two 2’s in one over! After putting on 41 for the first wicket Skipper Rob was caught which brought Russ in. Steve was bowled by a beauty of a inswinger the same bowler also taking Colin & Iestyn wickets with similar deliveries. With wickets starting to fall it was quite poetic that around the same time a random cyclist managed to deck it on the boundary, much to the amusement of us all. Paul strode in with his Thor like bat hoping to dish out some punishment to the bowlers, scored a couple, then a juicy full toss came his way and with his eyes lighting up brighter than Blackpool illuminations swung his mighty oak and…………heard the sound of his stumps and bails being dislodged. Russ and Amal put together a useful partnership of 38 to steady the innings and put Wick back on track. Amal was very unfortunate to get out but Russ was a man on a mission. Tubsy was the next man in and was just happy to pick up 1’s & 2’s whilst watching Russ at the other end show of his repertoire of strokes. In the last 10 overs Wick plundered 79 runs mainly from Russ who finished the innings on 93 not out deserved a century but just ran out of overs. One of the finest innings ever played in a Wick jersey. Wick innings finished on 189-6 considering that on the 30 over mark Wick were 110-6 showed just how fantastic that innings from our very own AB De Villiers was.
Onto the interval now and skipper Rob had got us all on the boundary edge and was in the middle of his very own Churchillian like speech when halfway through Kenny did a very loud and long fart, ruining what was a inspiring team talk.
Onto Bridgend’s innings and Paul and Tubsy took on the new ball and started well both bowling tidy and limiting the run rate, Tubsy picked up a wicket in the 4th over of the reply. Kenny and Carl both bowled well and were unlucky not to pick up a wicket. Westy was behind the stumps and for some reason our fielders used his body for target practice throwing the ball to him when he wasn’t looking, even Kenny started shouting at the team to ‘Stop trying to bloody injure Westy’. They say when it comes to bowling ‘s**t takes wickets’ and in Colins case this happened when he bowled a full toss the batsmans eyes lighting up only to hit it straight to the skipper at midwicket. With the run rate starting to creep up the Bridgend batsman started taking a few risks with their quick singles. Kenny had informed us that he had injured his hamstring on Wednesday so was taking it easy but even a half fit Kenny is a fielder you do not want to take on and that’s the mistake Bridgend made with Kenny again combining with Amal to run out one of the batsman. With Bridgend starting to make inroads to the target it was down to the last 8 overs and the action was on a knife edge. Skipper brought man of the moment Russ on to bowl and Steve to deliver the death overs. With the pressure mounting, Colin took a one-handed beauty of a catch at midwicket, Westy took a sharp stumping and Steve picked up 2 wickets .. one with a lovely slower bowl. The heat was on and Bridgend were looking like they could reach the target right at the death. Poor Carl fielding at long on was getting a barrage of balls being pinged down his way and Tubsy fielding at cow corner had to deal with a awkward bouncing ball. I have seen some boundary fielding in my time but god knows what happened here. But whether it was being inspired by the start of the premier league and summoning up his inner Virgil Van Dijk (more like Phil Jones), he managed to first stop the ball with his hands then the ball popped out he then somehow managed to head it away from the boundary miraculously stopping it from going for four!! true village cricket right there. With Bridgend requiring 13 from the last over Russ cementing his man of the match status picked up 2 wickets only conceding 6 runs bringing victory to Wick by 6 runs leaving Russ with figures of 3-24 to go with his 93 not out. Overall a wonderful day of cricket on a beautiful pitch with 372 runs being scored on the day. As always a great game played with great spirit always a pleasure to play Bridgend, big thanks to Wayne for hosting us.
Right that’s me done .. the pressure of doing one of these when our usual match reporter doesn’t play is more stressful than playing the game itself!
Our next game is against Vale CC on Sunday 14th August in Corntown, all are welcome to come down.
-Tom Dixon
