Wallington Wicked by 1s in Cup

Match Report - 1xi vs Wallington - Cup First Round - Matty Davies reporting

Ali, Davies, Rashid, Raza*, Mackie, High, Holland+, Tong, McMullan, Unsworth, Whinney

Scorecard

The Wick Saturday 1XI ignited their 2010 campaign with an ultimately dominant defeat of a below strength Wallington in the Fullers League Cup. Despite a woeful fielding display victory was achieved with minimum fuss and in the end no little entertainment and panache.

Wick skip Raza welcomed debuts for Nomaan Ali and Patrick McMullan. Pepsi (Greg) also made a welcome return to competitive 1xi action following impressive winter nettage.

Wallington batted first on winning the toss and Ali immediately found some ridiculous shape. The Wick's new recruit is not express, but he is more than quick enough. And he also bowls absolute hoops, which saw him beat the bat countless times. Along with Whinney from the Millennium Wood end, we probably earnt 3 wickets in the first 4 overs, but somehow managed not to collect any. The pressure eventually paid off as Whinney stuck with one that straightened.

Tong then joined in the party claiming wickets, although being below par. The bowler of the day was Pepsi, whose new nickname inspired him to 3 wickets, bowling some beautiful shapes on a green tinted Wick track. McMullan, not to be left out, capped an impressive debut with his first 1xi wicket, bowling 5-0-11-1 in all.

Despite the impressive bowling, the fielding can only be described as shoddy. At least 6 dropped catches of varying degrees of difficulty (Whinney, Raza, High 2, Holland, Rashid) and the same amount of blazing fielding cock-ups (Davies, High, Holland, Tong, Pepsi to name a few), gave the performance a feeling of desperation. Mackie, McMullan and Ali the only ones to escape blemish free. Having said all that, to drop that many catches, and let the ball through your legs so many times, and still only concede 133 is testamanet to the quality of the bowling. Things can only get better from here in the field, so no alarms need ringing at this stage.

DBW Teas - same old same old. He expressed concern that others had requested 'changes' to the line up. For now, it appears that 2010 will be the same as 2009, 2008, 2007... 1996, 1995...etc. The grass is always greener... [Good news for the traditionalists though - Ed]

Davies and Ali opened up with a brief to get on with it. Two classy 4s in the opening over from Davies (ahem) set the tone for an innings that would be over sooner than anyone could have predicted. Ali opened up fairly quickly, accelerating from a fast start to end up caught on the boundary, having hit 67 off 33 balls. Davies made a relatively serene run a ball 54* in comparison. The victory came in 18 overs with minimum fuss.

We now look forward to the first round proper of the Cup next week against a good Old Paulines side.

MOM - Pepsi. 6-0-15-3.