Portcullis fail to get their ducks in a row!

I suppose it had to happen some time - Portcullis finally won a toss. Luckily the skipper could still remember what to do next and he asked Fraserburgh to bat.

Things started well with Brett getting 2 early wickets, including the dangerous Cory Bowie off the second ball of the match. Ironside and Flowerdew then put together a good partnership and took the score on to 75 for 2. Portcullis kept plugging away but the scoring rate was gradually creeping up to 4 an over. The breakthrough eventually came when Flowerdew was caught by Sean off the bowling of Mohammad. As is often the case with such partnerships, when one goes the other quickly follows and Ironside was soon on his way too, bowled by Ed. From then on wickets continued to fall regularly as the run rate slowed to a trickle, and Portcullis began to get back on top. Alan Rennie offered some resistance late on and played some fine attacking strokes before being bowled by Ed, who finished with 4 for 41. Brett with 3 for 29, Mohammad with 2 for 36 and Sean with 1 for 30 were the other bowlers. Simon took a couple of sharp catches at the wicket and Abdul a good reflex catch at silly mid-off.

It was a fine fielding performance to bowl Fraserburgh out for 136 and spirits were high during the tea interval, especially as the weather had improved considerably since the start.

Unfortunately the batting continues to leave a lot to be desired. Ed and Mohammad opened and briefly looked comfortable until both fell to badly judged shots, Ed being bowled and Mohammad caught at point. Mohammad had played two fine shots for 4, which in the end was to make him our top scorer on 8. There then followed the latest in a sadly long line of batting collapses. Abdul, Simon, Hisam, Ashiq, Mike and Bob all went without scoring. Brett and Sean briefly stopped the flow of wickets, but didn’t stick around long enough to affect the outcome. Sean was forced to retire after receiving a direct hit on his foot and Brett was out soon after, caught behind. Stephen played a few nice shots at the end and looked comfortable for the short time he was there but unfortunately he ran out of partners.

The final total was 37 for 9. Not our worst total ever, but not even enough to get a batting point.

Monday, 16 July, 2007