ABCC A Team v Wythall (Under 11's) - 19/5/08

The Under 11's A team took on a decent Wythall side at Ridgeway on Monday evening. Wythall were first to bat and got off to a shakey start by running themselves out twice early on. A batsman then had to be substituted as he had been hit a couple of times by Joel and Taran. Wythall then began to rebuild and their total was back into the black after a couple of boundaries from their captain. The innings progressed steadily and finished on 238 after the allotted 16 overs.

The Bank got off to a solid start in reply with Ed and Elliott at the crease, however, a sloppy shot across the line saw Elliott clean bowled. Jacob and Kieran batted excellently together and displayed superb calling and running between the wickets. Cameron and Adam also batted well. We were unfortunate to lose a wicket when Adam was run out when the ball was hit straight back at the bowler. Adam did lose a sloppy wicket in similar circumstances to Elliott before playing a superb pull shot to the boundary for four. Our final pairing of Joel and Taran brought lots of runs. Taran played some superb cut shots whilst Joel played some strong pull shots, one of which sailed for six. The Bank eventually eased well beyond the victory target to seal a good win against a good side.

This was an all-round good display from the team and a well deserved win. Looking onwards, there are still areas that we can improve in training in order to beat high quality opposition.

Barnards Green V ABCC (Sunday 2nd XI) - 18/5/08

Bank visited Barnyard Green on Sunday with a very young and inexperienced team. On the way to the match, somehow, Nosferatu persuaded me to allow him to open the batting and keep wicket in return for him voting Conservative at the next election. Well I kept my part of the bargain Phillip!!
On arrival it became clear that we had to win the toss and bat as the boundary towards the pavillion was only 35 yards long (by then I had also spotted the monster hitting Andy Wheeler was in their ranks).
Shakey lost the toss but amazingly we were put into bat on a very dodgy looking wicket. Nosferatu and the classy Undies opened and very quickly put on 46 before Undies was for some unacountable reason bowled round his legs for 24 bringing Duggie to the crease at 3. He soon followed, bowled, trying to whip one through mid wicket before he had settled.
A collape ensued and we found ourselves at a precarious 90 odd for 7 when Boycs was joined at the crease by the other, much less demanding junior Bowes. Together they put on 90 for the 8th wicket, not without some comments clearly heard by myself from Mr Lyth about hogging the strike! This time I plead not guilty as Junior Bowes practially refused, for some reason, to face the "paceman"
4 balls left in our innings and only Shakey left to bat so I really could not let anyone down, dancing down to get stumped allowing Shakey to face the last few balls. Head up in the air and clean bowled!! Oh dear.
Barnyards innings commenced with Undies and Duggie opening the bowling. All went very quietly for 5 or 6 overs then all hell broke loose when Duggies 4th over went for 32. Not helped by the Barnyard square leg umpire who called 3 no balls(for the ball being over waist high, when they were barely knee high!!!!). To make things worse these all went for 6. Cue Duggie going ballistic!!! A little naughty but sort of understandable in those circumstances.
The first wicket brought the aforementioned Mr Wheeler to the crease and he literally went ballistic smashing 89 off only about 30 odd balls. They were not slogs either and our youngsters and Shakey had, not suprisingly, no answers to this sort of hitting. Milo in his first twos game bowled quite well to him so too did Caveman.
Game over after only 19 overs. We could easily have been chasing 400 if they had batted first!!
Thanks to all who played and made themselves available for this fixture its a pity more cant just bite the bullet and play the odd game even if you cant play all the time. It is becoming a nightmare to get two sides out at present so just remember a cold night in November 2007 when it was clearly stated we would have no problems getting two teams out on Sundays!!!
By the way its been quite good fun so far even though we have had a stuffing in both games.

Boycs

ABCC 2nd XI v Belbroughton 2nd XI - 17/5/08

Belbroughton 79 all out ABCC 81 for 2

The Bank took on Belbroughton at home on a rain affected wicket fortunately for the skipper he lost the toss and Belbroughton elected to Bat. After what can only be described as a shocking effort from the whole team to remove the large white cover form the ground we eventually got underway! Meat was given choice of ends after his fine fifer the week before and opened from the top end AC playing for the twos this week made a great stop at Gully one handed in the first over and then started to get upset that he had dropped a catch obviously still got his first team hat on, we were all impressed with the stop. Meat struggled with his run up for the first few overs but after the skipper threatened to remove him from the attack he struck in his forth over. The dismissal can be described as Bevo esk with Mckenzie deciding to leave a straight one (to be fair the ball did move off the seam!!!). Next over the mighty Bowes had finally stop whinging about the egg he had to bowl with at Droitwich the week before and had Harris caught by Gimp with an easy catch from behind. Meaty now pumped up had a great chance dropped by Gimp in the next over, with the skipper deciding it wasn’t going to be meats day he took him off. Obviously Meat not being happy with this decision as he never is was walking to his fielding position at Mid Off where the mighty Bowes comes out with the classic “ I am not going to get the batsman out this over I just like playing with them at the moment” which put a smile back on Meats face. AC then joins the attack with the mighty Bowes. Roll back the years was the cry from the team so everybody did apart from AC from all round the team were shouts of come on Derek come on Del, at which point AC with some slight nerves shall we say came charging in and after a shocking LBW decision was turned down (again it was a full toss and should have been in the chicken farm) AC (Derek, Del Boy) strikes with an excellent catch by Gimp down the leg side clearly making up for the drop earlier. After that wickets started to tumble at both ends Bowes now realising that he can’t play with Batsman all afternoon started to take wickets, another caught behind for Gimp an excellent running catch over his head from Clarke. Even the Skipper managed to take one low down to his left. AC now free of the nerves clean bowls Taylor and Belbroughton are in a bit of trouble. After 7 overs from AC he is clearly knackered and even commented perhaps his fitness campaign needs a bit of work (clearly needs a bit of fitness advice from the Big Urn and the Skipper). Bowes still applying pressure to the batsman creates a bit of panic between the two batsmen and Smelly produces a good throw to Gimp and Raybould is left stranded. Kitching into the attack, first ball we won’t mention getting baseball batted into the car park starts well with Meaty warming up smelling wickets keen to get back into the attack. Two Wickets to Kitch good catch by Clarke at slip and another steady catch by the Gimp now in great form takes his tally to 5 catches in two games. Finally the Mighty Bowes fittingly clean bowls Johnnie Raybould to finish with well deserved figures of 15.3-7-25-4! Excellent fielding performances from the Bank all round making the skipper feel quite proud!!

Due to the threat of rain and after Clarke was eventually persuaded the Bank went straight back out to bat before tea. Bevo clearly in form from last week starts like a F1 car with two glorious back foot cover drives that the Skipper could only dream of playing. The bank soon gets to 30 in no time at all before Clark skies one to Mid Off. Smelly comes in three and steadies the ship until tea. After tea Smelly and Bevo return the Skipper confident they will soon knock the runs off and early drinking imminent with 25 runs required Bevo elegantly leaves a straight one and over go the stumps out for 33. Pedders strides to the grease keen to impress and Smelly decides to open up shortly afterwards hitting a 6 to win the game in style finishing on 31 not out and Pedders 2 not out. Bank claiming 24 points moving up to 5th in the table travel to Netherton next week who are currently top of the league.

ABCC v Barnards Green (Sunday 1st's) - 18/5/08

Barnards Green were the visitors on Sunday. Bank, with usual captain Wonka away sinking a barge somewhere, were being captained by new boy Johnno. Once again, the Bank were fortunate enough to win the toss and elected, as usual, to bat first.

With a side full of bowlers, it was always likely that our score was going to be below par and if it weren't for pest and rocket it would have been embarrasing. Meat and Vanner opened the batting and played well for the first 2.5 overs until Vanner was beaten by Barnards' Aussie paceman. The very next ball, Meaty, facing the left arm trundler scooped a loopy full toss straight to square leg for one of the easiest catches you are likely to get on a cricket field, a terrible error that pretty much cost us the entire game and has probably ruled out our chances of winning the league i would say! Johnno and AJ had a decent partnership. Johnno scoring a quick 62 with a little help from their fielder at long on. Everyone else pretty much came and went without troubling the scorers too much. Pest and Rocket put on an impressive partnership at the end to prolong the innings past the drinks break and inch the score towards respectability.

The Bear who prepared the teas put on an impressive display, sadly, as i was on tea making duties, i didn't make it to the tea table in time to get any of the chicken tikka sandwiches. I did enjoy the chocolate muffin though.

Barnards Green came out to bat and made a shakey start, losing their opener to a "gorgeous" inswinging yorker from Mr. Freeman. This was about as good as it got though for the Bank as they struggled to make another breakthrough. The scoring continued at a steady rate until a late flurry of wickets gave the Bank a wiff of hope. Johnno ended with 2 wickets and the Bear picked up one. Barnards eventually reached the target with about 7 overs to spare with 6 wickets remaining.

In summary, the Bank let themselves down with the bat. I dont wish name names but T** H***** should be brought infront of a disciplinary committee for poor scoopage.

Eastnor V ABCC - 17/8/08

Deja vu again at Eastnor on Saturday, in fact you may as well just read last years report of this game as almost the exact same things happened! On arrival the pitch was noted as just being rolled mud, as usual, and once again the toss would be crucial. Dave lost it again and Bobby J gleefully advised that we would be batting first. A complete nightmare for me personally as our friend Shahid is surely the best(and fastest?) bowler in the league in these conditions.
So it was Boycs and Seals who opened, a quick dash from me to get to the non-strikers end to watch the carnage. However, it was just as tough facing Adeel who was moving the ball huge distances off the seam.

After a couple of loosening overs Shahid upped his pace and made Seals and me look like complete monkeys. One particular ball to Seals, who took 11 overs to get off the mark!, was very funny, a bouncer that was fended off the bat handle with legs akimbo( this is supposedly the clubs classiest player!!)

After the openers were dismissed the pathetic run rate continued and after around 30 overs we had only 42 runs on the board.

Things changed though and Big D and Robbo batted very well, after Shahids spell ended, hitting the pie men all over the park. One blow from Dave over the pavillion was especially memorable.
Further high quality slogging was purveyed by Peter at the tail end of the innings, one massive blow into the gardens was amazingly powerfull.

If this young gentleman could just get his bowling right he would be a top all-rounder for us in future years.So a final total of 180 was a very good performance but you have to question why Shahid was taken off to completely let us off the hook??

I personally now know how difficult it is to open the batting against top quality bowlers each week on mainly poor standard wickets. So far we have had Shahid, Rogers and the left armer from Bromyard to contend with and it would be nice if we had an"equaliser" ourselves! So come on Peter you can bowl nearly as quick as these guys and the innings you have played so far must have given you confidence. I'm not happy about all the red inkers though.

Magnificent tea, then it rained, everyone wanted to go home and so we did. Robbo 56* was the top scorer(you earn enough money to buy a decent bat I'm sure?) and DOD. Diesel MOM. However the DOD had to be Johnno for his comment to Bobby that it was surely beer o'clock by now!!!!!

Astwood Bank u10's v Belbroughton u10's

The Bank u10's opened their season on Tues 13/05/08 against a very talented
Belbroughton side, although the scores don't reflect the performance,
Belbroughton batted first totalling 256 for 3 of which 52 were extra's ( we
will be concentrating on bowling for a few weeks during training), with only
2 players scoring more than 2 runs in 16 overs, which also included Will
Bray's 1st catch behind the wicket.

The Bank lost 3 wickets in the first 2 overs to put them on the back foot
and with some excellent bowling from the Belbroughton lads battled back
towards the end, with Bayliss-Adams and Knowles both scoring 7 runs each.
Finishing with a total of 210 for 8.

This was a baptism of fire for some of our lads but they will also of
realised the standards they will need to reach and will have learnt a lot
from their debut match.