3s Wheels Come Off at Walton

How Smithy Saw Clarky's 1-33

Walton on Thames 3xi - 195-9 (50.5) Dom Jones 4-35

The Wick 89 all out

WoT win by lots

And so to Walton on Thames – the next stop on the 3s’ journey through Surrey Div 2. Wickman awoke  to thunderstorms, Clarky to dreams of dusky maidens and (ahem) – sorry – thoughts of victory in a near top of the table clash.

Walton 3s play on the old Olinda Vandals island, home now of the Weybridge vandals – in a ground share. The deck was sort of mottled. Hard in places.  There was a suspicious damp patch on a length (Clarky’s dreams again (ahem, ahem)) sorry – and the track was sweating after a night under the covers (like er… Clarky). All in all it’s not a bad place to play cricket – the weather was hot and humid and both skippers fancied a bowl. But Clarky, standing in for Saycey, called correctly.

Prawn and Smith were handed the new ball and Smith promptly outbowled his junior partner, enjoying the rare luxury of not being 4^th change. He swung and seamed it and was unlucky not to remove either opener in what was a fine spell. Prawny too beat the bat regularly and kept a tight lid on proceedings. However the slight lack of pace in the pitch early on possibly reduced his wicket taking potential on the day and we were forced to sit in and see if we could fashion a breakthrough.

That was achieved through a genius piece of teamwork, Mackie and Lloyd spotting a technical flaw in the #2 and the skipper responding by placing Mackie at short midwicket… only for #2 to clip one almost immediately to him off the impressive Smith. The ridiculous (Smith) was then exchanged for the sublime (Dom Jones) who promptly removed the other opener caught behind.  Things didn’t look too shabby at this point.

Drinks were taken after 20 and both sides could be convinced that they were doing well, the Wick limiting the runs, Walton with wickets in hand. To fiddle a few overs in the middle, and from the sublime back to the very ridiculous, Clark employed himself in lieu of a by now exhausted Prawny and with a mixture of filth and more filth immediately convinced the dangerous looking #3 to hole out at midwicket, pouched by Mackie to accompanying groans of anguish and an audible-all-over-Surrey bellow of "noooooooo" from Smith who could hardly believe that so much good bowling could go unrewarded only for Clark to golden arm a wicket with a pie.

At the other end Talman was employed to bowl left arm around and did so very neatly and with some guile. Almost immediately he too took a wicket, inducing a skied pull to midwicket where a composed Will Taylor took a running pluck. However, dear reader, if we are honest, at this point there was very little threat or spite in the wicket and the Wick through Clark and Talman hurried through some overs to limit the scoring insofaraspossible. There was heroic fielding in this period from Blanchard and Taylor in particular to limit the damage to Clark’s figures and Smith galloped gamely in the outfield to do the same for Max.

When Walton reached for the accelerator, we turned to Prawn and Dom Jones again to stem the flow. Prawny settled in after a few looseners were despatched and Walton and Christie established the game’s major partnership, but Prawny will not mind this correspondent saying that it was the younger members of the team that pulled wickets out of the hat. Blanchard took another screamer at slip, Max ran out the most dangerous oppo bat from the boundary and then Dom Jones mopped up in the face of batsmen who were intent on smiting – having one caught at slip by Smith, now hiding there from exertions of galloping - and then clean bowling two lower order swingers.

Walton declared promptly on 50.5 overs having amassed 195-9. The skipper was quite pleased right up until he realised that tea was do it yourself ham and cheese buns. Poor we felt.

So – the plan was to bat 30 overs and put together about 75 for the loss of perhaps two wickets and then bosh 120 from the last 20 as Walton wilted in the humid afternoon air.

Erm… a fairly confident start from Blanchard and Talman – who both clubbed various boundaries – seemed to suggest that the target could be overhauled. However. Hobbs for Walton bowled full, quickish and straight and the Wick seemed to suggest that this was not on. Three of the top five were bowled by him and another LBW to a Yorker and a further bat, seeking refuge at the other end, could only nibble one behind. Hindsight is a clever barstard but he would suggest that just keeping this bowling out until drinks would have been a better strategy. By drinks we were five down for – let’s say – 40 – and the game was gone.

Lloydy swept his way to 20+ but the rest were undone by the magnitude of the task (we did need 120 from the last 20… but only two wickets remained at this point) and we rather meekly subsided to 89 all out.

Sooooo. Comprehensively taken down by a good Walton bowling performance.

Lessons to be learned:

1. Keep out the straight ones.

2. If there isn’t a bad ball see 1.

3. A bad ball from Clark is as effective as a good ball from Smith

MOM certainly Dom Jones. A very impressive swing and seam bowling performance showing great promise for the future