Medlocks Southend Evening Cricket League, Wednesday June 2
On a nice June evening (apart from a billion Gnats landing on me!!!) at Southchurch Park I popped over to watch my first Medlocks Southend Evening Cricket League contest as hosts SOS & EMT took on Leigh-on-Sea Cricket Club it a twenty overs a side contest.
Leigh batted first and it didn't start well for them, losing a wicket to just the third ball for no runs, I had not even made my position round to the banking I was going to sit/lie/stand on and in fact missed the wicket completely as was too busy saying hello to a strangers dog who had come over to me to say hello!!!
Despite this early set back for the visitors it was to be their only one, and a second wicket stand of 72 got them back up and running, and in fact they did not lose anymore wickets in the conventional way for the rest of the innings as the next three 'wickets' were all batsmen who retired 'out', two of them after making fifties (it's something they do in this competition) and the other retired on 35 not out, and after some big hitting they amassed a huge total and you felt it was one the hosts would have no chance of chasing down.
Sure enough they never ever looked like chasing their mammoth target of 204 down, and at 17/3 it looked like they would succumb to a monumental defeat, and a rather embarrassing one at that, however a fourth wicket stand of 54 did at least nudge them up towards some sort of respectability, with one of the batsmen making 45, and you felt a score of 120 plus was possible, but once he got out the runs just totally dried up and they could only struggle to 105/9 in their twenty overs.
It had been a brilliant all round display from Leigh-on-Sea, who had a bowler called Harry who was just 14 years of age, he looked very good already so he can only get bigger and better, he took a couple of wickets and bowled very well indeed, as did all his other bowling compatriots, so well done to him and his teammates, this was a thrashing in every sense of the word.
Lastly it was good to see slightly different things in this game, batsmen retiring once they reach fifty to give other batsmen a go, having ten overs bowled from one end before bowling the second set of ten from the other, no sightscreen at one end, players/staff taking turns to umpire the game, and a mixture of adults and teenagers in both sides with differing types of bowling and batting techniques, these people do it for the love of the game and that's is good to see.
Here are some snaps I took during both innings:-
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