The Blues excellent winning league run came to a halt on Saturday at the hands of the experienced bowling of Sheldwich in a rain interrupted affair. The hosts elected to bat and despite putting on 57 we knew we were in the game following good bowling from Big Mac and Hill Billy Hilbert; it was a case of what might have been in this spell as a number of aerial shots just eluded the fielders but The Claw showed us all how to do it eventually pouching the dangerous Creed at long off. We then started to make in roads and the dynamic all round fielding that has deserted us for a couple of weeks returned in abundance - Eddie Screwbar featuring here with a run out. This assisted the bowling greatly as Joey Essex (2/34), PBW (4/46), Manners (1/32) and Gaylott (1/22) will all testify. Sheldwich finished on 166 and we were right to be optimistic but cautious too.

As Doris and Zubi kicked things off for us, Get It Get It duly announced himself as our new psychologist with some fantastic one liners: "conservative batting" and "laboured efforts" suggested that the great man has taken up a new line in politics but no, this was his was of keeping us all interested and focused on the job in hand - Joey, we love you! The dynamic duo were watchful and looked to be settling in to the groove until Doris managed to hit his own wicket with his helmet! The red one who went the extra mile (well 70 odd) to be here for this one was understandably fined heavily for his trouble, but of course his departure meant we had to take even more notice now of Joey's advice! Zubi, Miami and Manners all did their best to get us going but due to the tight bowling of Sheldwich we were unable to truly get going and lost our way a little. They bowled 7 maidens in our innings to our 4 when they batted! The net result of this was that we still needed 100 off of 20 overs albeit we had wickets in hand, but with a couple of rain interruptions, the hosts sensed victory. Albert and Great Bloke smashed it for a little bit but along with our other harrier fighter jets came a cropper. Poke did his best with a swashbuckling 27 in the last half a dozen overs but having ran Barrymore (who looked dangerous) out our attempt came to a virtual halt in the penultimate over. The Claw with only one foot left after his courageous fielding efforts came out with Essex as his runner but he also was unable to make it happen and we fell short by 9 runs.

A great game of cricket, and with two games to go now, we arrive at the business end of the season.

Andy Carney