Frogmore do the double over ragged Ricky

In sport, as in life, preparation is everything. But Ricky's 2nd XI planning was in confusion from the beginning of the week and turned into chaos by the time the first ball was bowled. With a number of key players missing from the 1st XI, the pool of players was already small, when other players decided that they would rather take a holiday than face the league leaders, Frogmore. Yet more disaster when another key player was lost to the game the night before, resulting in a team to face Frogmore that comprised just one player between 20 and 34, a 13 year old on debut for the seniors, a makeshift No 3, an injured bowler playing purely as a batsman, only 3 front line bowlers and no spinner.

So set against this backdrop, the only choice for the skipper was to bat first on winning the toss. Points would be at a premium against a opposition team who had only one player over 30 and who had chased down 264 to beat our strongest team earlier in the season.

Things started well for Paul and Ed, before Paul called for a quick single that really wasn't on and Ed was run out for 10 with the score on 27. Waheed came in next, taking on the Bobby role, but was unlucky to get out caught down the leg side by the Divisions best keeper. Raz and Paul then set about rebuilding, however after reaching 29 Paul was given out lbw to a ball that clearly hit the bat. A number of the Frogmore players were in agreement and approached the skipper, however he was unwilling to surrender the advantage he had been handed on a plate and skipper Blackwell had to make the slow trudge back to the pavilion. Majid batted in the way he knows best, striking 3 big sixes over the short boundary before getting caught at mid-off for 46. A rather good catch it was too! 119/4 and Ricky were hoping the engine-room of the middle order could push for a score of 200 with Raz to guide them. However it wasn't to be as Kamran, Tahir and Brett went for a combined score of 5 and it was left to Raz and the tail to wag. Even that was all too brief and how Ricky reached 170 was down to a judicious 32 from Raz. Not one player was bowled so it's fair to say that every wicket was handed to Frogmore (especially the two run outs) and though we didn't play as well as we could, the 170 was deemed a score that was possibly defendable.

And so it proved as Frogmore looked anything but comfortable against our quickest bowlers Majid and Tom. Majid in particular bowled as well as he ever has and got just reward with 3 wickets in his first spell of 12 overs. However Frogmore dug in and seemed happy to let the scoring rate climb to 5 an over whilst keeping wickets intact. 4 wickets down and still needing 70 to win, Ricky had a glimmer of hope, but nothing then went Ricky's way. A couple of missed run out chances came and went, but nothing else went to hand. Al Darraji and Fraser cruised to the required total with 4 overs to spare. Billy ended with a wicket whilst 13 year old Tahir really impressed with 8 overs of tight medium pace on debut.

The result is two losses in a row which has seen Ricky slip out of the promotion shake-up in 5th place. Whats needed now is a few wins in a row to put Ricky into 3rd place. Teams have been promoted from there before, so it's a mini-league between Stevenage, Ricky and Baldock now.