Cossey five-for seals tight win as Llamas progress unbeaten

Kim Gurbutt maintained his 100% record of losing the toss in the Surrey Slam as the oppo won the toss and elected to field first. Sri and Joel opened the batting for the Llamas. Sri got of the mark in Sri’s fashion with a boundary. The T20 specialist was quickly removed by their skipper in second over, followed by the dismissal of Joel.

When Gregson and Morgan also fell cheaply, the slammers looked in a bit of trouble at 35-4. Ant Ireland and Jnr Shoare (Tyler) came to the rescue by putting on a near-100 partnership, Jnr Shoare hitting first ever six in his cricketing career followed by a maiden half century (50*) in adult cricket ("I scored more runs in that one innings than my brother has managed all season" - Jnr Shoare).

A well crafted knock of 45 from 31 balls at the other end from the 3s skipper ("The only bloke who makes batting look so difficult" - Welsh Lara - 7 from 13 balls) got the Llama’s to 130 off 18 overs, with captain Gurbutt chipping in to get us to a below par score of 145.

Notable Batting performance: S Gregson, who must have had his eye on the BBQ hutch while batting.

The oppo chase got off to a slow start as Snr Overseas and Manish bowled well in the first power play to restrict the oppo run rate to below 6. Cossey bowled some thunderbolts to claim match-winning figures of 5-18 off his 4 overs with a questionable curly run up (definitely not a 10 yard run up), along with support spells from skipper and Sri to restrict run flow. However, a number of dropped catches and poor fielding efforts kept the oppo back into contention. Snr Overseas and Cossey held their nerves at the death to ensure victory and top the group undefeated.

Onto the next round, seeded in pot 1 as group winners to face a team from pot 2. It will be a home tie for the llamas for topping the group.