With most Greenies Toos players unavailable because of Winter Olympics commitments at Jerry’s, it was a new look Toos side that took on Paramount on Saturday 20th Feb 2010 with George Kounas, Pete Bigwood, Stuart Reed and Matt Wright all stepping up for their Toos debuts and Dogga filling in as skipper for Texas.

Dogga called the toss wrong and we were asked to bat on a damp looking wicket in overcast (and cold) conditions. The Paramount bowling attack was nothing flash but we struggled with some uneven bounce and pace, couldn’t keep the run rate near 4, struggled to keep any wickets in hand, didn’t bat out our 40 overs and ended up scraping together an uneventful 135 off 35 overs. Shan and Jim Rocks were promoted up the order in a carefully crafted experiment that didn’t produce the desired results. Jonty scored another solid 35 or so but realistically we needed him to score about 150. Sparky Randall and Dogga scored 20 or so but that’s not really worth mentioning.

Lunch failed to arrive between innings and rain was threatening so the umpires decided we should get on with it. And get on with it Paramount did. While we got a breakthrough in the first 5 or so overs, it didn’t bother Mango and his mate who went ballistic and carted us all over the park. In between innings Watto had told me to put in a fly slip for Mango but I forgot and sure enough the first ball Mango faced from Jonty was top edged to where fly slip would have been standing…gutted. We tried desperately to slow things down in the hope that the game would get washed out before we got to 16 overs but the rain never arrived and Paramount got the runs required with 25 overs to spare… that’s correct 25…Dogga bowled pies, Jonty and Pete Bigwood looked very handy and bowled well in tough conditions and Matt Wright had a tough start to his Greenies career going for about 25 off his 2 overs.

Whoever said Paramount can do a whole lot more than cover your floor was right. Many thanks to the boys who stepped for their debuts and those who played both games that weekend.

MOTM – Jonty – another good all round performance with bat and ball.
POTD – can’t remember anything too spectacular about our game.
COTD – Dogga for losing the toss / Matt Wright for his first Greenies over – went for about 20 or so.