Woking & Horsell Cricket Club

A very proud weekend for the Green family - several birthdays to celebrate including Teresa's 60th at the club on Sunday and Giles' becoming the second Green son to captain the 1st XI. This just goes to show what a long way Giles has come from the boy who used to turn up hungover, late, having not washed his kit and with no semblance of organisation......... oh no actually the previous weekend he kipped the friday night on my sofa and turned up late and hungover despite asking me 5 times over the previous 24 hours what the meet time was!

Week six of the 2010 season saw us playing at home to Addiscombe, also the day that England were to start their world cup bid. With the opposition putting in a very professional warm up and arriving with at least a dozen spectators we knew we were in for a fight, I was once again on the losing side of the coin and we were invited by Addiscombe to have a bat. Malcolm departed early when shouldering arms the ball climbed a little higher and off his bat onto his stumps. Jan and Toby then batted extremely well taking us to 90 when Jan just chased one to many and was caught at long on. I then came and went in miserable fashion being stumped attempting an exaggerated drive.  Newcomer Bilal tried desperately to form a solid debut but a great piece of bowling saw us stagger at 102/4. Toby then over-thought his innings and chased was out trying to up the momentum when we need stability, but never the less a great knock and awesome to have Mr Green back in form. 105/5 saw the rock that has become Qais Nawaz and the experienced Hayden Anderson confidently work our score to where we knew it needed to be. Hayden looked in unbelievable touch showing the timing and grace we expect to see more and more of as the season progresses. With another spurt of wickets and with Shazad hitting his first ever 6 we managed to get a respectable 213. Possibly a little short but definitely one that we knew we could defend.

On a blazing hot Saturday afternoon we hosted Warlingham in the first of our time based games, and what a humdinger it turned out to be. I lost the toss and Warlingham decided to bat, but we would have bowled first in any event and were dead keen to bag our first 13 points. We started superbly, our new ball bowlers, although getting tired quicker than normal bowled an awesome new ball spell. Our first change bowlers then kept the pressure building with Ian Meyer making a welcome return to the first side and bagging a couple of wickets to get the wicket ball rolling, Damo and I then chipped in with 2 a piece and at 69/7 we thought we were going to wrap up Warlingham for under 100, but Warlingham showed some great spirit and with Tim Slade quite brilliantly farming the strike and with our energy levels dipping Warlingham made hay while the sun shone and eventually posted 179/10 in 54.1 overs, a great disciplined 4 for from Ian Meyer the highlight. I was disappointed in our last 25 over effort as the we dropped our concentration levels, admittedly the heat took more out of us than I thought but it is something we need to be more aware of in the weeks to come. A special thanks to Couch, the outfield was lightning quick and the ground itself is just looking great. The pitch played exactly as our groundsman predicted it would giving us an insight the opposition did not hope to have. 

After a BRILLIANT tea, we then went out to bat, after suddenly facing an old ball (the time rules catching us a little unaware) we again found ourselves in the usual sub-par score and 4 wickets down, this became 5 wickets down until the veterans in Jarrad and Ian stepped up and were indeed brilliant. Jarrad unfortunately picked a wrong length ball to pull and was bowled when we would have loved for him to carry his bat, but Ian with some minor help from the tail and a composed veteran innings from Damo saw us home with time to spare. Ian batted brilliantly and was deservedly our man of the match. 

Top of the table after 5 games is a great place to be but we need to ensure we keep going and learn to deal with hot summer days more effectively! Warlingham also proving that there are no easy games and if we want to get promoted we need to treat every opposistion with the repect they deserve. We need to get our performance up to 110% and show that we want to be the champions I know we can.

Thanks to everyone who came down to support, I can’t begin to describe how nice it is playing with supporters around, and with the club looking in awesome condition we can only go from strength to strength. 

Cheers for now, 

Ryan Pogson (1^st XI Captain)

So in really horrible weather we set out for SinjunGrammarians. In our minds the worst pitch in our league and upon inspection once again we feared this would be the case, with a new look team due to availability I lost the toss and we were put into bat, a good opening stand between Malcolm and Jerry gave us hope that we could fight the pitch demons but in the back of our minds was the ball off a length that hit Jerry in the chest and the ball of a length that hit the keeper on the ankle. We then capitulated, with some indifferent batting we managed to scrape our way to 142, Jarrad once again showing his class with a well played 30, but a score we really need him to start converting into 80’s. The Green brothers batted superbly and for the first time together on the pitch in what is believed to be a VERY long time. All in all some glimpses of the batting we need with moments that can be securely blamed on the pitch and a couple of indifferent strokes from the rest of us, myself included. Personally I think the batters just need to make it to nets more often and get used to leaving the good balls and punishing the bad balls.