We lost a fairly hard fought encounter against Pro Plus on Saturday in the 3rd vs 4th Playoff. After winning the toss I put them in, hoping for a few early wickets.  From the outset Troskie had the ball swinging a mile and the batsmen were playing and missing at will. Before too long he bowled Sammy with a cracker and he then put into action his well crafted plan for the no. 3. By bowling 5 wides in a row at the start of his next over the batsmen was so keen to get bat on ball, he played a shocking shot to get caught at cover. Two others followed in the same over and they were looking very shaky at 4 for 20odd. Jerry kept the pressure on at the other end (with no wides) and we steadily took wickets, with fantastic fielding restricting their scoring. After a couple of direct hit run outs from me (maybe the fielding drills at training do work!) they were floundering at 8 for 65 and we were hoping to wrap it up quickly. They managed to put on another 30 before being all out however, due to about 15 wides and a dropped catch, so they ended up all out for 95 in the last over.

Troskie took 4 for 20 odd off 4, Jerry 0 for 24 off 4, Gordon 1 for about 15 off 4, Randall 2 for 13 off 3.2, Jimmy 0 for 11 off 2 and Gerard 1 for 11 off 2 on debut.  25 wides & 1 no ball out of a total of 95.

With a few changes in the batting lineup, we were hoping to steadily take down the runs with some good partnerships however this was not to be. With Simon, Gordon, Alex and Randall all out for under 5, Dave Raj and I set about trying to rescue the innings. After 10 overs we were 4 for 32, and needed 64 off the final 10. Raj was striking them fairly cleanly and although I could barely get bat on ball let alone find the middle, we took the score to the point where we needed 33 off 24 balls. This proved too much and we ended up falling short by 13 runs. Batsmen to score over 10 were Raj 20 off 28 and myself 22 off 39.  We only hit 1 four for the innings, with that & our wides making up the difference.

Our fielding was one of the best performances I've seen by Greenies - one dropped catch late in the day the only blemish. We need to work on our wides and clearly our batting, which has continued to let us down week in week out.

Taking a big risk in having Dogga make the fine bottle even though he wasn't playing left us with a fiery concoction of oyster sauce, various spices, ginger beer, lemon and cottage cheese. I'm presuming there was alcohol in it, but I've got no idea what it was.

MOTM - Troskie 4 for 20 odd
POTD - Me for a runout
COTD - Troskie & me in a tie. Troskie for bowling 5 wides before picking up three wickets and me for not having the playing kit there for the start (silly me for presuming the unnamed Pom who had it in his car would have dropped it off).  Special mention to Jerry for his post fine session leap & run on the boot, roof and bonnet of my car.  Footprints still clearly visible!