2s win at Linton Park

Bearsted 2s travelled to Linton Park on the back of a wretched performance and comprehensive thrashing by Farningham. It was with some trepidation that they noticed Farningham had been easily beaten by Linton the previous week.

Skipper Croom dealt with selection dilemmas ruthlessly, telling your trusted match reporter “look boyo, you can’t bat, you can’t bowl and you certainly can’t field”. Surely he would come to regret leaving out one of his star players.

The pitch looked in good condition albeit with a green tinge. The outfield was frankly massive.
The Welshman reverted to type, losing the toss and Linton chose to bat.

Ben Lush opened the bowling, starting with a peach of a delivery and continued in a fine vein bowling unchanged to end with figures of 9-3-24-1. He would have another wicket had not the usually safe hands of Chris Filmer dropped one at mid off.

Jack Feehan opened from the other end. In the earlier games he has looked like a young man who seemingly wintered a little too well. However this week he was straight into his stride hitting the seam. In two spells, his figures were 8-0-28-1.

Redders replaced Feehan and bowled well right from the start. He took the first wicket, the batsman falling to a catch from John Haggert in the covers. Haggert at times looks like a man who is allergic to grass, preferring to stay upright and a safe and genteel distance from the turf. On this occasion though, he moved sharply to his right and lay down to take a low catch. Redman finished with outstanding figures of 9-4-16-2.

The young number three strode to the wicket and played several extravagant straight drives. Unfortunately he never got anywhere near the ball. Redders in particular seemed to be toying with him in the way a cat plays with a young mouse. Indeed when Redders failed to hold onto a straight drive it was possibly because he was having so much fun he did not want it to stop.

Ben Lush meanwhile accounted for the classy left handed opener, courtesy of a sharp catch by Latter in the gully.
Tim Lush proved his cricketing nous with a lengthy rant to the debonair umpire that there was no point us having a slip, as it was a complete waste of a fielder and the batsman was never going to edge it. Approximately 7 nanoseconds after the rant had finished, the batsman edged one through the slips.

Gutteridge bowled well with figures 5-1-26-1

Filmer had a short spell of 3-0-19-0. Latter replaced Redman and made hay. He took 4 wickets for 28 runs in his 8 overs, with catches by Croom and Haggart and two clean bowled. The opposition’s best batsman was 13 year old F Taylor who worked the ball well to leg and hit some powerful straight drives.
Linton finished on 147 for 8.

It had been a completely different bowling and fielding performance from the week before. The question was therefore whether we could match it with our batting.

T Croom and T Lush opened up. Linton had a tall young quick who looked dangerous but the pair stuck at it and ran much better than last week. With one side of the pitch in Essex and the other in Sussex it was hard to score boundaries and the batsman did have to gallop up and down the track a lot.

The rest of the Linton attack was not as sharp. In particular, the first change bowler was distinctly loopy. His complete lack of pace did though mean he was hard to get away.
The pair put on 69 for the first wicket before skipper Croom, realising he was on 48, cunningly lobbed one up to midwicket and fell to a fine running catch.

Richard Luxton came out at three and immediately looked comfortable (well, apart from all the darned running between the wickets). Tim Lush finished unbeaten on 60 with Luxton still there on 30.

The pair reached the target with 7 overs to spare, leaving Bearsted with an unexpected 9 wicket win.
What a difference a week makes.