A slightly overcast scene greeted us at the Green along with a swarm of u13s playing on the artificial wicket due to an overnight sprinkler issue. As more of the 1st team arrived 11 players were seen circling the ongoing u13 match nervously and selfishly worrying about whether the match wicket had been impacted by the rogue sprinkler. Upon inspection all appeared fine so another road was expected, but would the overhead conditions favour bowling first? Probably not. Bat first. Or bowl. Could it swing early? Bat. Definitely. Or bowl. Bat.

Out in the middle the skipper, unnamed keeper and retiree on 50 in the midweek game threw the coin up. “Heads” muttered the oppo skipper. Tails it is. The oppo skipper looks at me. I look at him. He looks at me more. I hold the stare. “Well?” he questioned, unnecessarily in my opinion, “what do you think?”. Outrageous behaviour, who does this guy think he is? Does he want me to tell him what to do on our wicket? “I’m not going to tell you what to do pal” I retort. “Errrrr…..you won the toss”. “Ah yes, errherm, of course, errrrrrr sorry…..we’ll have a bat”. Lets hope this wasn’t a sign of things to come.

Out to the middle strode the freshly rested Lewis Bedwell and Noel Johnston and it started pretty well really. Noel took his natural role as the aggressor scoring quicky with Lewis at the other end taking his time. At the 5 over mark Noel was on a run a ball 15 and Lewis 5 from 13. Steady. Then came the 10th over.

After playing out a maiden in the previous over we sat on a respectable 43/0 with 27 from Noel and 15 from Lewis. 9.1, Lewis on strike, in comes their opening bowler, going at 4.5 runs an over, and it’s a pull for a hamstring testing 2. 9.2 and that is in the slot my son and it is pumped to long on with one bounce for 4. 9.3, full and wide, Lewis waits and then wallop! 4 over extra cover. 9.3 full and on leg stump and whipped away for 4. The bowler holds his head thinking LBW was in play but the reality is he should be grateful it didn’t go for 6. Yet. 9.4 and the bowler puts down an identical ball looking for the LBW he thought he nearly had and that is out of the park over mid wicket. 6. No head in hands this time but a lengthy search for the ball is needed upsetting Lewis’ rhythm and he can only muster a single from the last ball of the over. Just like that, in the blink of an eye Lewis has gone from 15 from 20 to 36 from 26 and he never looked back.

The response to the previous over from the oppo was an interesting one. Having seen Lewis batter their opening bowler they brought on a very slow, very loopy left arm off-non-spinner and unsurprisingly Lewis took him apart bringing up his 50 from 34 balls with a massive 6 over extra cover and at the end of that over (over 14) we had sprinted to 95/0. Not bad.

Noel sadly departed next over for a very well made 32 from 50 balls to a questionable LBW shout and just short of the 100 partnership. 98/1 with Joe Waylett joining Lewis who was now on 62 from 38. The pair took us to drinks risk free (kind of) and nudged the score to 133/1 from our first 20. With drinks being consumed you could sense the buzz across the team. “We haven’t seen one in ages”, one player said. “When did it last happen?” others questioned. No one could remember when we last saw one but the acquisition of a 2nd jug for drinks was nothing short of a game changer allowing much easier preparation and distribution of said drinks, not to mention allowing both orange and summer fruits to be provided. It must have been 4 or 5 seasons, we concluded. The other topic of conversation was something about Lewis and something about a league century as he sat confidently on 85 (from 53 balls for those interested).

It took Lewis a further 6 balls to reach the century and aptly with a massive massive 6 straight back over the bowler’s head. What a shot and what an innings. 101 from 59 balls and only in the 22nd over. A 2nd jug and a century all on the same day. What a day. How much more could he score? 165. 165 runs from 94 balls. 19 4s 9 6s. 165 from 94. What an innings. It was a top top knock and a joy to watch. Simply outstanding.

At the other end Joe had been battling away against the very slow bowling coming down to him and after a slowish start for him he picked up the pace brilliantly bringing up his 50 from 54 balls with a brilliant 4 through long on. Beautiful shot. Everyone rises and claps the battling 50, top knock that. Sadly Joe fell next ball and even more sadly for 49. It turns out that Ellie had added up his score wrong.

After Joe and Lewis had departed the score sat at a lofty 267/3 and with 6 and a half overs to go the questions were, how many could we get and should we get a 3rd jug? Benj, Milo and Dan all made contributions as did Westy and Pep who were the not out batsmen at the end on 18 (12) and 10 (4) respectively taking us to 325/6 from 40. A mammoth total and something to be very proud of as, of course, was Lewis Bedwell’s superb innings.

With 325 on the board and on a road of a wicket with the lightening outfield nothing had been won yet. At least that is what we told ourselves, but the reality was everything had already been won. As usual Lushy was opening up down the hill and Jimbo up the hill and it was Jimbo who drew the edge early. An agile low diving catch was needed from the unnamed keeper, which he did to aplomb but unfortunately forgot to close his hand after the ball hit the glove and down it went. Lets hope the fielding team could recover from this. Next over and Lushy take the faintest of faintest of feathers from the other opener which was snaffled by the UK. 6/1 but nothing was won yet. Sorry, and the game was already won.

Lushy struck again in the 7th over clean bowling their number 3 with a beauty and Jon Mitchell saw their number 4 depart in the 8th with a sharp low catch from Pep. 34/3 after 8 overs. Nothing was won yet although when Jimbo struck again in the 12th over dismissing their dangerous opener, caught Milo at mid off, the game was perhaps won.

As the sun began to set, and the batsmen went about diverging the two teams’ respective worms further and further, it was over to Pep to make the next breakthrough. After bowling some lovely away swingers he smashed one into the pads of their number 6 with Westy smashing the pads of their number 7 shortly after. Both plumb and at 91/6 the game was won. Or was it? Yes it was. Their skipper dug in attempting to eek out some batting points but the final 4 wickets were taken by Pep (bowled) followed by 3 wickets for Over the Wicket Joe, 2 bowled and one caught by Lewis at please don’t hurt me mid off (the lesser known position some way further back than silly mid off) and at 161 all out the game was indeed won. It was a solid bowling and fielding performance all round particularly when the oppo were clearly not going for it with notable mentions for Lush (9 overs 2-34), Jon (7 overs 2-34), Pep (6 overs 2-25 including 1 maiden), Westy (4 overs 1-17) and Joe (4.3 overs 3-17).

What were the key takeaways from such a convincing win I hear you say? Well, any learning can be difficult after such a dominant display but the biggest learning, for me at least, is to really understand how a toss is won and lost. Beyond that all that can really be said is that was a top effort from all but a particular doff of the cap must go to Lewis who played a simply stunning innings that was a joy to watch for all. Except perhaps their left arm non-off spinner. Eynsford away next. Big game.