There He Blows !!!!!

A warm afternoon with skies clearing and light NE wind saw us play hosts to current league leaders Scarcroft. If many of the faces of the opposition seemed familiar it was because the majority of the Scarcroft team played for East Keswick last year in division 2. Their change of club hadn’t improved their time keeping but by 10 minutes after the start they were all finally on the pitch.

The Milford side showed one change from last week when we stuffed Sicklinghall, Martin Bramley coming in to replace Loz White.
Stand in skipper Stu Morley once again won the toss, he must be the best tosser we have ever had in the club !!!! Unsure on how the wicket would play he elected to bat. The wicket didn’t look too clever, a bit patches in places but his fears were unfounded as it turned out fine for batting.

Stuart opened the batting with Matty Paul and both started in fine style. Playing some classy looking shots they made the Scarcroft opening bowling look very ordinary. Matty in particular seemed to want to play a shot at every delivery. Later we learnt why he was so keen to get on with it, the poor lad was suffering a dicky tummy and was keen to get back on to the Armitage Shanks.

Still he was able to put a 73 run opening partnership on with Stuart before edging one to the keeper. Not sure who was the most relieved, Scarcroft to have made the breakthrough or Matty to get back to the safety of the pavilion. Not often you get runs on & off the pitch !!!!!!

An excellent start for Milford then fortunes reversed. Dan White played a very loose shot to get his first duck of this campaign, Alex Ward joined him a ball later when he shuffled across his stumps to be judged LBW. Things got worse when Stuart collected his mandatory LBW just before the drinks break. Falling agonising short of a fifty with 47.

The old habit of East Keswick seemed to have had has moved over to Shadwell along with most of the players. You only bring on the better players later on in the game. Milford hopes were briefly raised when Ben White and Sean Nesbitt started a fight back but Sean became another LBW victim and Ben failed to clear Basharat Zaman at mid-off when he looked to be turning the game in our favour. Another trademark swashbuckling innings.

Steve Winspear showed lower order defiance with his best of the season 35 but ran out of partners and became the last LBW of the innings. Dan Ward made it a pair of ducks for the Ward mantelpiece when he was bowled as last man. So a sub par 197 was what we had to defend.

Teas this week were prepared by the Ward family and Brian was busy behind the counter pouring the teas. Plenty of grub on offer but sadly Brian had not channelled his inner Mary Berry with bought sweet stuff only been offered.

To have half a chance we needed a good start with a couple of quick wickets. It looked like we had one when opener Shoaib Rehman got a leading edge which popped up just in front of Matty Paul at mid wicket. Alas Matty was concentrating on trying to keep his whites pristine and never got close to it. Thankfully his late dive didn’t produce any unwanted results.

This was the only chance Rehman gave as he led the Scarcroft charge. He topped scored with 71 and when he was finally out with the score on 141 for 3 the writing was on the wall. Talmoor Aziz came in at number six and obviously had a bus to catch as he smashed the ball to all corners (and beyond) to clinch the 6 wicket win inside 34 overs. Finishing on 28 not out off just 9 balls.

So Milford trooped slowly off the field, the exception Matty who was a bit quicker, the first time this season where we never seemed to compete in the match. We move on to 2nd place Kirk Deighton next weekend and hopefully we can put on a better performance and Matty gets runs with only the bat………