Woodies beat Currie & Balerno

The Woodies bounced back from their recent McGlynn XI defeat with a victory over Currie & Balerno at a sun-soaked New Field on the lush grass wicket. Our visitors were mildly depleted due to Covid related challenges therefore after some discussion, a couple of Woodies crossed the divide to shore up the numbers to make a game of it.

Woodies were first up in the field and it didn’t take long before the opening wicket fell. Joyce got the ‘Big W’ hands up for the ball dropping out of the sky from Russell’s delivery.

Stand-in skipper Williamson almost made it two however the cherry was too hot to handle then Bennett was unlucky not to get his hands on a return from his own bowling. Shepherd showed how it was done in athletic style moments later, swooping like a seagull on chips across the wicket to dive low and held on to the ball whilst performing a forward roll that wouldn’t look out of place on an Olympic mat in Tokyo later this year.

Joyce went from catcher to despatcher as his wicked delivery found the middle stump and his man headed for the sheds. The final wicket was a corker from Corkery as the keeper pounced to slamdunk the stumps with the batsman way out of his crease.

A quick turnaround sent in the opening partnership of Corkery and Neaves. It was a slow start, with the feel of Test Match stuff (without the tweets) as the electronic scoreboard slowly ticked over with more singles picked off than an edition of Channel 4’s Naked Attraction.

At the half way point in proceedings, Woodies were behind the curve at 40-0. The pace picked up slightly as our men in the middle offered some sterling sprints between the creases before Neaves had his bails removed. He was replaced by Joyce who took little time to settle in with a selection of boundaries and sweet strokes to see the Woodies edge towards victory.

Corkery looked like he was set to survive the entire innings however one scoop too many saw him swat the midgies and the ball landed on the timber uprights behind him. A strong contender for any Man of the Match award if there was one on offer.

Bennett put on the pads and promptly sent the ball beyond the ropes leaving Joyce to sweep up and hit the winning runs.

Good fun all round and thanks to Currie & Balerno for coming down despite the unavoidable numerical challenges and ensuring we all got a run about.