After a strong start to the season, the Clifton 2nd XI were subjected to their 6th defeat in the last 7 games, and are really starting to pay the price for missing key players.
From the team sheets in the first half of the season, the following players were missing this weekend: Steve McManus, Liam Dorsey, Dan Jones, Owen Hogben, Jordy Higham, Sas Pushparajah and Oscar Thorpe. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the 2nd XI would be much, much stronger with just a few of them playing, never mind all 7.
But it does give an opportunity for others and a chance to gain experience at 2nd team level, but we might have to temper any expectations of promotion hopes as a result.
Elliot won the toss and made the decision to have a bowl, and it took until the 14th over with 71 on the board for the breakthrough to come, with Ethan Kite getting Rayson (41) caught in his first over.
Stand continued to tick the scorecard over, helped once again by the ridiculous amount of wides being bowled. I thought the 39 wides bowled at Woodbank would take some beating, but it was 38 here. It’s just nowhere near good enough if you want to be competitive at this level.
The only bowler to go at less than 5 an over was Lewis Keogh, and he also bowled the least amount of wides with 3, finishing with strong figures of 7-3-15-1, but he didn’t get much support from the rest. 53 extras in an innings just can’t happen, and stand in umpire Liam Dorsey must have had sore shoulders on Sunday morning.
So a chase of 235 required which looked almost impossible with this batting line up, where Ethan Kite was the lone raider with his knock of 59 to prevent a really embarrassing defeat.
This week’s opening partner was Elliot Hogben, who put on 8 before being caught, with Luke then coming in at 3 in his brother’s usual spot. A few nice flicks off the legs for boundaries were followed by snicking off for 10.
Of the rest, only Fred (13) managed to get into double figures when coming in at 8, with everyone else falling for single digit runs in a sorry total of 130 all out, made to look semi respectable with another excellent half century from Ethan.
In a damning stat, 5 of the 8 bowlers used bowled more wides than they scored runs in the chase.
This second team are limping to the end of the season now, where all focus at the club is quite rightly on the first team staying up, the 3s wrapping up the league title and the big Cup Final on Bank Holiday Monday.
Roll on next season….