Match Reports: 2010 - Wall v Lichfield Nomads

Nomads achieve first non-defeat of Season

A warm, sunny day at Sutton on the Hill saw the return of Ball and Craddock to the Nomads team. Captain Westwood won the toss and elected to field. He opened with stalwarts Heslington and Hoddy who bowled tightly to restrict Sutton to 51 off the first 16 overs. This also saw the fall of 1 wicket to each bowler. Heslington claimed the dangerous Martindale, whose policy seems to be to hit every ball for 4 or 6, to a brilliant over-the-shoulder catch by Westwood at point. Westwood also caught Duffill off Hoddy at mid-on. A double change saw the introduction of Westwood and Collins, K. The batsmen started to try to push the scoring along after the drinks interval with Hall striking some fierce off-drives. Westwood replaced himself with Fearon after 4 overs. Craddock replaced Collins but was a little bit rusty, bowling a number of wides and was replaced by Greaves after 3 overs. Fearon had a prolonged 10 over spell to the end of the innings and claimed the wickets of Hall and Taylor with good catches by Heslington and Greaves. Greaves picked up the other wicket. Nomads bowled 45 overs and a score of 209 to win seemed possible although we knew we were likely to receive fewer overs than our opponents.

After a fine tea, Westwood opted for a policy of opening with our run-getters to chase the run-rate with some “stoppers” lower down the order if we needed to shore things up. A solid start was achieved with 33 off 10 overs before Westwood was bowled by Day. This saw the introduction of Fearon who demonstrated his intent by striking his first ball for 4. Fearon and Gardner, who was having his most fluent knock of the season, pushed up the run-rate to 4 per over even against the miserly Ashford and a Nomad’s victory was becoming a possibility. However Fearon called for a sharp single to a misfield by the keeper, who gathered the ball and threw the stumps down from some 10 yards running out Fearon by the narrowest of margins. Martindale had replaced Ashford and quickly claimed the wicket of Craddock. Ball soon followed falling to Day and then Gardner to Martindale. Nomads had slumped from 70 for 1 to 79 for 5 in the space of 7 overs. With only 16 overs remaining and 130 runs to win Heslington and Stanley were given orders to shut up shop. Stanley took this as meaning knock a few fours off the quick bowler and made a rapid 21. Martindale swapped ends a couple of times to change things a bit but then the long overdue arrival of a couple of different bowlers restored normality and the Nomad’s innings subsided calmly to 125 off 40 overs

J Hoddy 7-6-11

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