Waverley rise to Oakley challenge

Amid blustery conditions Waverley rallied to beat Oakley by 33 runs

Waverley battled hard to record a third consecutive victory on a windy afternoon at Oakley. Despite some showers earlier in the day the match was on and Waverley elected to bat first.

An early victim of the Waverley innings were the bails, the tedium of having to replace them every few minutes after being blown off by the wind became too much. Stuart Webb was the first batting casualty of the afternoon when he was caught by Welsman at mid-wicket. The ball held up in the wind and the Waverley opener was through his shot too quickly, chipping the ball nicely to the fielder.

James Wright, returning to the side following a month long absence, appeared to pick up where he left off at Shalford and set about accumulating the runs with some early boundaries. Waverley's second opener made it to 54 before holing out to the man in the deep. Three balls later Ian Verrinder returned to the pavilion, bowled for 17, leaving Waverley 89-3.

Captain Simon Brewer and M Carmichael kept the score moving along with some quick singles and well struck boundaries by Simon but the captain misjudge the straight ball and was clean bowled attempting to sweep to ball towards the vacant fine leg. Carmichael followed soon after with the score 113-5 and Waverley's batsmen began to collapse once again. Russ Golding played some fine shots before lobbing the ball straight back to the bowler and Adrian Day followed four balls later without troubling the scorers. When the wicket of Bob Moxham fell a few over’s later Waverley were left 139-8.

The Thursley batting partnership of Knox and Vass were reunited at the crease and as with the week before were left the task of steadying the ship. Both batsmen looked comfortable at the crease and put on an unbeaten 52 run partnership to see the remaining over’s out leaving Waverley with a commanding 191 run lead.

Waverley opened their bowling attack with Adrian Day and the spin of Simon Know into the wind. The first wicket soon fell when the opening batsman took on the bullet arm of James Wright pushing for a third run; the throw landed perfectly in the hands of Adrian with the batsman well short of making his ground reducing the hosts to 10-1.

Despite their early success Waverley's bowlers were to be frustrated by the determined batting of Worthington and Holbrook who put on 66 runs between them. Having seen several catching chances put down in the field there was a collective sigh of relief when Adrian held on to a high looping catch to dismiss Holbrook which began a remarkable run of catches. Adrian went on to catch a similar chance off the bowling of Simon Brewer to dismiss the excellent Worthington for 55 and then Sell and Shears of the bowling of Herbie Scarth to take his tally for the day to four.

Amid the catches Herbie had struck in his first over when Ellis was cleaned bowled attempting to charge leaving Oakley 132-4. Adrian then claimed his two catches, the second immediately followed by a relaxed catch by Stuart Webb in the deep putting the master of disaster on a hat trick. The hat trick ball was floated down, lobbed by the batsman but fell just short of the desperate dive by Marcus Carmichael.

James Wright cleaned up the remaining batsman, clean bowling two and then a mix-up between the batsmen off of his bowling resulted in a run out. The final seven wickets fell for just 26 runs.

54 runs, two wickets and some excellent fielding was enough to secure the man of the match award for Jim who was also awarded the Egyptian hieroglyph supporters pink T-shirt award for complaining that his was "tired". Russ Golding was awarded the pink T-shirt for cumulative dropped catches but made a swift exit from the ground meaning the award defaulted to Marcus.