Sunny, with light drizzle right at the start, allowing Bilal time to arrive.
Scanning... scanning… Victory acquired
With robotic, machine-like efficiency, Village CC glided past Pecos with a five wicket win.
Thanks to a good team performance from the bowlers, with tight lines and wickets at regular intervals, the home side restricted Santa and his elves to 140 all out. Naz (2-24) and TdM (2-11) particularly impressive.
In reply, VCC set about their task with a mix of guts, application and skill, as Bossy (36) and Grey Ham (15) get us off to settled start. Collapse then threatened but never fully arrived, as Bosh hit a quick-fire 27 and the in-form Cressey (18*) and ever youthful TdM (14*) saw us home.
In typical VCC fashion the moment of the match was a dropped/missed catch which any one of six players could have probably caught.
Pitcher bowled, the ball looped 62 feet into the air and hovered over the wicket-keeping position. Instead of an easy catch being taken; Naz smiled and nodded at gully as if he was back in Amsterdam; Bossy re-faked his hamstring injury from backward square; Pitcher’s follow through is not long enough; Thomo stood and laughed at cover; Bilal thought about cheesecake at mid-wicket; Ollie moved himself from a short but deep mid-wicket to a slightly longer mid-wicket, and JdM rotated on a sixpence several times looking at the floor seemingly using radar to track the ball’s last known location.
We laughed for pretty much the rest of the innings.
Very good pub session afterwards, skipper home at 2am. Village at its best.
