More Rain and Double Top

Ipswich & East Suffolk - More Rain & Braintree - Double Top Just as the weather forecast has predicted it was a wet Saturday in July and for the 3rd time this season we were left kicking our heels as the game was abandoned. What that meant was that we had 6 games remaining and if we could win 5 of them we would be champions for the first time. The opponents who stood between us and that goal were 1. Sudbury - Home 2. Wivenhoe - Away 3. Exning - Home 4. Frinton - Away 5. Copdock and Old I’s - Home 6. Braintree - Away The next two would certainly be testing. We’d squeezed past Sudbury earlier in the season after getting Jon Kent out before he could take the game away from us. We’d been rained off against Wivenhoe at home but we would doubtless find ourselves on a turning track prepared to suit Andrew Golding their left arm orthodox demon. Maybe nerves would play a part along the way but we would certainly miss Elmo in the run-in. We would also have to contend with patchy availability and the threat of injury, each week Neal Harrington seemed to limp through the game. Evidence of how much Elmo would be missed can be seen from the list of contributors below.... Batting 1. Dubbers = 504 runs 2. Elmo = 241 runs 3. Cook = 224 runs 4. Arkle = 213 runs 5. Rubber = 138 runs 6. Spaggs = 122 runs Bowlers 1. Trevaskis = 36 wickets 2. Legend = 13 wickets 3. Elmo = 11 wickets 4. Rubber = 9 wickets 5. Jap = 6 wickets 6. Pugh = 3 wickets For the visit of Sudbury our team would contain 3 changes from the convincing home win against Mistley. Out went Elmo, Arkle, Toby and in came Rare, James Ellis and Steve Gozzett for his only appearance of the campaign. He became the 21st player we fielded that season and we still had time to find a couple more new faces before it ended. At around this time we also encountered rain in our cup game which was an away tie at Braintree. The game took place on Sunday 9th July. We fielded what a strong XI in a game scheduled to be a 45 over match. We won the toss and managed to navigate the first 5 overs to be sitting pretty at 45-0. Spaggs had smashed two maximums on his way to 28 not out. Rubber had 7 not out whilst there were 10 extras. Then it rained, for quite a while. Eventually it relented and a new game was started. It would be 20 overs each. Spaggs and Rubber again opened the batting. The pair added 53 in just 4 overs. Spaggs had hit another couple of sixes and the runs were flowing. Then came an over unlike any other. The bowler was Steve Hale. Ball 1 - six runs Ball 2 - four runs Ball 3 - six runs Ball 4 - six runs (front foot no ball) Ball 5 - six runs Ball 6 - six runs Ball 7 - six runs 40 runs off one over! It was enough to get Spaggs into the national press as The Sun picked up on the news. Their report contained a picture of our hero holding a torque wrench (not a spanner - something to do with adjustability apparently). That over took out score to 93 off 5 overs and Spaggs onto 68 (including a 19 ball 50). He would depart soon after for 77 off 27 balls with the score on 116 off 7.2 overs. From there we decelerated and lost a few wickets before a terminal downpour stopped the game again and it was also abandoned with our score at 150-4 off 11.5 overs. It’s highly likely that we would have exceeded 200 in our 20 overs and that would have been pretty tough to chase down. Four days later we had to go back to Braintree for a Thursday evening 20 over match. We lost the toss and they amassed 180-8. It was more than enough, a point emphasised when we lost our last 7 wickets for just 8 runs...in truth we were never in the hunt and lost by 85 runs...what might have been. This 3rd match was only really notable for the 1st XI debuts for Geoff Brooks and Statto...fair play to both of them for making themselves available!