Defeat despite defiant defence

On his return to the 1st team skipper Jonathan Mills stood like King Canute defiantly holding back the tide of the Garforth Parish Church bowling attack, but even his highest score of the season (68) wasn’t enough to gain Milford a much needed victory.

Thunder & lightning greeted our departure from the ‘Thack and torrential rain on the roads threw the fixture in doubt but by the time we got to Garforth the sun was out, the clouds white & fluffy and the covers just been removed.

It’s along time since we visited Garforth PC for a league match, the last time would have been when we both were in the West Riding League. They now have a nice pavilion and separate score & umpires hut. The ground nestles besides housing estates and light industrial units.

Garforth won the toss and put us in, probably they were aware of our recent batting performances and thought they could go through us quiet easily.

The last month our batting has been as brittle as a brittle thing and it hasn’t been since early June that we have batted out the full 45 overs. Captain Mills returning after 3 weeks holiday in Cyprus had other ideas and together with Greg Handley started brightly. Garforth PC’s young opening bowler Hayden Mortimer was having all sorts of problems with his run up and line initially and Greg took full advantage, he smashed a lovely boundary through point and tried the same with the next ball only for Paul Scott to take a super low down catch.

Peter Batty and Hew Oeppen both came and went at the crease without troubling the scorer and it looked once again that the Milford batting was again going to fall apart. Jonathan had other ideas and together with Gary Liddle put together a 44 run stand for the 4th wicket. It looked that all his hard work was for nothing when Gary succumbed for a battling 20.

Milford once again wobbled and at 86-7 looked to be heading once again for a poor score. Jonathan needed someone to stay with him as he battled on trying to set a half decent total. He found that in Jack Hebden, our under 15 player. Jack batted very maturely and played some very nice shots off his pads. Together with Jonathan he pushed the score up to 122 before been deceived by one of Hayden Mortimer’s rare balls on the wickets. He scored an excellent 14 putting on 38 valuable runs with Jonathan and helping his skipper to his second league half century of the season.

Some late innings thuggery by Loz White helped us to our 3rd highest score of the season, 166 for 9. Jonathan Mills finishing on a season best of 68 not out having faced 135 balls, 50% of the total innings.

Reasonable teas were provided though there was little originality in the selection, one nice touch was the sweet pickle available to spice up the ham sandwiches. The weather was still fair but cloud was increasing and the forecast promised the return of thunderstorms.

Our bowling needed to be accurate but there were too many short balls and full tosses from openers Loz White and Peter Batty to keep the pressure on Garforth openers Paul Scott & James Stockton. They put on 66 until Loz got his radar working. With the wind suddenly picking up he started to generate good pace and looked very dangerous. He broke the opening partnership up and took the wickets of the three opening batsmen. Unfortunately, he ran out of steam after his 3rd wicket.

At the other end Hew Oeppen came on and also collected 3 wickets. His first wicket, a caught & bowled, saw the ball ballooning high into the sky. There was no way anyone else was going to get a chance of getting the catch as Hew careered round the ground like a demented bluebottle trying to get under the ball. Just as well he hung onto it, otherwise it he would never have lived it down.

The usually reliable Adam ‘Elmer’ Gee replaced Loz at the far end but this week his normal nagging line & length seem to desert him. With menacing grey clouds behind him and a beautiful rainbow to the east he couldn’t make any inroads into the Garforth middle order. Garforth crossed the finishing line in the 27th over, Milford failing to pick up the 7th wicket which would have given us a point, which this much improved performance probably deserved.

With this defeat and other results like Hillam beating Kippax meant we are now a win behind the rest of the division. With 6 matches left we will probably need to win at least 3 of them to stand any chance of retaining our division 2 status.