COGGESHALL, ORANJEBOOM AND THE ELUSIVE 12^TH MAN

Saturday the 28^th of May saw the 1^st team travel to the small but not insignificant Hamlet of Coggeshall, a reserve county ground of generous proportions.

The team selection had been a difficult one, a considerable cohort of the team had decided to take to two wheels and pedal around the beautiful countryside of Yorkshire searching for their sanity. We spent most of the week on 9 only to find that we had a 23 man squad on Saturday morning, our elusive 12^th man soon vanished and normal service was resumed. Jason Parker and the Chairman stepped into the breach and the 11 was complete.

As we decanted from our motor vehicles we noticed Jason was struggling with his kit bag, it appeared to be rather heavy, and when asked he declared that he had brought his own covid Oranjeboom in case the bar wasn’t open. A shrewd move on his part, as it was a scorcher and hydration is important as well as courage and everything else lager brings to the party.

The toss duly lost we were put into the field opening with H.whileyand R Webb on a lovely flat, dry hard wicket. A lesson on how to bat was given by a young Essex colt who looked at ease and made few mistakes, his companion at the other end was equally at home until he retired hurt, a minor triumph, however the hitter kept coming. We did drop a couple of hard chances with H Whiley juggling a chance at least 5 times I saw! There was also some great fielding by Matt Jones and Noah Boreham. A Mcaffery bowled an excellent 12 overs of off spin with JWS propping up the other end. In the end a total of 289 was posted and the chase was on.

Our openers got off to a slow but steady start A Mcaffery 57 H Whiley 41 but they were bowling straight and true and the ball seemed hard to get away and 289 seemed a bridge too far. As the wickets fell there were a couple of cameos but we ran out of overs and were never at the races. 163 all out.

All in all, a good enjoyable performance and a hard earned 6 pointswhich could be important come the end of the season. Mildenhall next week. All the fun of the fair!