Off the Mark At Drapers

The second fixture to be played by Maldon 1st XI in 2000 was a home game against Ipswich and East Suffolk. I missed this one, I’m pretty sure that this was due to a work commitment that involved a set of golf clubs! That said the scorecard tells a pretty straightforward story which sounds like this. After winning our first game against Mistley the only change to the XI was Neil Banny in for his only game of the season for Jeff Cook. Drapers was hosting its first game for us and it was usually a pretty flat track without many demons, I couldn’t say the same about the outfield! Scores of 200-250 were common place in 50 overs despite fairly long boundaries in all directions. Spaggs lost toss for the second week in a row and inevitably we found ourselves in the field. The I&ES side contained a few names that were quiet familiar to me including Mike Edmond who was on Warwickshire’s books up until the end of the 1999 season as a fast medium right armer who could swing the ball effectively. I knew him from Indoor Cricket where he had represented England on quite a few occasions. He opened the batting together with Derek Bloomfield who was known to his teammates as “Dog” but we had christened him “The Butcher of Ipswich”....neither were meant to be complimentary as I recall. Edmond took the attack to the Maldon bowlers but was cleaned up by Travaskis for 31 out of an opening stand of 42. He’d struck four 4’s and one 6 but this was his final meaningful contribution as he’d also open the bowling but go wicketless through 11 overs. Rubber, Spaggs and Legend each tool one wicket as the Dons worked steadily through the rest of the top order to as I&ES battled to 150-4 with 10 overs remaining. The big wicket of Rob Glassford, a Peter Wargent doppelgänger in his mannerisms, stemmed any hope of a high score and the innings closed at 195-9, a total which was to prove the 2nd lowest of the season for sides batting first at the Farm. Legend took 4-48 whilst Trevaskis bagged 3-59 and these two were the pick of the bowlers. After feasting on the Drapers tea the guys at the top of the order put together partnerships of 59, 70 and 48 to secure an unassailable position of 177-3 after 39 overs. We lost another 3 wickets before getting across the line with more than 6 overs to spare and in reality the eventual margin of victory was more comfortable than the scorebook suggests. A total of 26 extras didn’t help the visitors and it looks like they were probably 40 runs short of a good total. It was a good days work with runs for Dubbers (53), Spaggs (46), Man (34 with just one maximum) and Elmo (30). We didn’t know it at the time but it was to be Damian’s last game for the club....this definitely had an adverse effect on our strike rate, in 2 innings he’d hit 108 with 80 of these coming in boundaries. So that made it two wins from two games without winning the toss and thoughts of finishing in the top rather than the bottom half started to enter our minds...next up would be a trip to Sudbury, que sera sera...3 changes to the XI with Neil Banny, Neal Harrington and Damien Westwood being replaced by Jeff Cook, Keith Bannister and James Ellis meant we would probably field a weaker team for what was certainly our toughest task so far!