Bleak & Baltic 1st XI Visit to Whitwell

Grit. Perseverance. Backs to the wall determination. A fur lined jacket. These attributes were all in abundance in our amazing supporters who braved the bleak & baltic conditions of Whitwell today.

On the playing side of things, we lost the game but the scores don’t tell the full story. We bowled really well with little luck and deserved better! Zak Berridge opened up and clean bowled their opener in the first over, and he could easily have got their main man Shaw for a duck too but the ball just looped cruelly wide of cover. Small margins! Shaw subsequently teed off hitting it airborne just out of the fielders reach numerous times. It would have been easy to roll over and feel sorry for ourselves but we kept plugging away which was brilliant to see. Hayden Cox (8 overs, 2-37) was excellent and bowled his best spell of the season in my view, while Dan Fotheringham (7 overs, 0-36), Zak (7 overs, 1-42) and Ben Tomlinson (8 overs, 0-56) all bowled well without luck against some very aggressive batting! Star bowler though was undoubtedly veteran Simon Dean who came on and reeled off 10 overs for a brilliant 2-41. I trundled through 10 too and got 2-53, as Whitwell finished on 277-7. That might seem like a big score but from 180-3 after 30 we battled really well in to stay in the game and not lose control.

We’ve had some dark days in the past batting at Whitwell and we haven’t been in great batting form of late, so could we make a decent fist of our reply? Matt Lyon led the way superbly hitting some lovely punchy shots on his way to an excellent 41. The cricketing Gods were still against us though as Ben Tomlinson was given LBW despite a blatant thick inside edge that flew to fine leg! Matt, Chris Ward (3) and Dan Fotheringham (0) all got done by balls that shot through low and despite James Davies chipping in with an entertaining 27, we slipped from 85-2 to 98-6. Rich Tomlinson (13) and myself (17) got us a couple of batting points as we passed 135 and one of the highlights of the day was seeing a great knock from Zak Berridge at no.9 (22 off 37 balls) to see us get past 160 for the third batting point. So, we were all out for 172 but were close to batting out the full 50 overs. Loads of positives so well done to everyone for digging in and earning us 6 bonus points - let’s keep battling away.

- Mark Dean, 1st XI Captain