Crescent unable to capitalise on a 'mixed' Lindfield side

The fact that the Lindfield skipper said (at the end) that they would happily play us twice a year every year, and by the way they had been let down on Wednesday and could we raise a side for then tells you much of what you need to know about this game.

You don’t need many years of experience of Sunday friendly cricket to know that it can be a dangerous thing to take too much notice when the opposition skipper says that they have a very mixed side due to an event going on at the club on the same day. Thus it was that Lindfield won the toss and decided to field on another glorious sunny day.

What followed was not ideal as Benn Pomfrett and Terry Garoghan opened to few alarms until Terry got an interesting LBW decision when on just 4. Nick Hollands and Benn put on a 30-odd partnership in decent time and a big score looked on the way until Nick (18) was given run out when he was some metres beyond the crease. Larry Dent joined Benn and built a new platform and 60 run partnership albeit at a reduced run rate as things became more difficult on a slow pitch. Larry ran out of energy with 37 with the score on 128 and Benn departed for a well-made 63 a couple of overs later when the rush was on to make that good score. Joe Gatford made a quick 20, Matt Wood 4 and Jamie Will 4 not out in the final total of 172-6. Fewer than we wanted or indeed could have made on another day, but enough to give us a chance should Lindfield really be short of batting.

We will never know how short of batting Lindfield really were. With all due reverence to the Gatford clan, we were short of seam bowling and our plan was to tempt and winkle out the batsmen with our multiple options of flighted filth from one end with John Gatford and Joe keeping things quiet at the other end. That plan was scuppered by John (4-1-15-0) blowing a fetlock in his 4th over and Joe (6-0-37-0) really struggling with a lack of confidence in his bowling at the moment. We also had the problem of a pair of very competent young batsmen opening the innings for Lindfield. With the exception of a possible run-out their partnership of 117 was pretty much chanceless in the face of the Gatfords and Richard Beglan (6-1-30-0) until Jamie Will (4-0-31-1) tempted one of them into crashing a catch to Nick Hollands on the boundary. Simon Wood bowled a long spell to finish with 10.1-1-45-2 and Nick Hollands chipped in with 3-0-11-2, but the damage was done and we couldn't defend our total from that point.

From the look of the lower-order batting, if we had managed to pick up a couple of early wickets we should have won, but that was not to be. Lindfield finished with 176-5 with a few overs to spare and disappeared fairly rapidly to join the event back at their club. We were left to wonder if things might have been different if…..