Every year before this fixture we generally ask ourselves the same two questions. Firstly, is this Vocalink or Killigrew, though I don’t think anyone knows the answer to this anymore; and secondly, how strong are their overseas contingent this year? We did, at least, know the strength (or lack thereof?) of two of the oppo as Hazon and Wonnacott kindly offered to fill in for them.
I lost the toss and Fishers were asked to bowl first, the game proceeding in a rather leisurely fashion until Mitch Morris came on to bowl. A young man who, unusually for someone representing Fishers, is able to actually turn the ball, he took a wicket with his first ball for the club and proceeded to pick up three more (including the key wickets of both Hazon and Wonnacott) in finishing with 4-20. Bungle’s usual array of two wides followed up by a snorter on middle stump brought him two wickets, whilst last year’s leading wicket taker Nurse also took two as Vocalink were restricted to 79 all out after 19 overs.
The batting was opened by Walia and Ramsey, the latter seeming to want to make the most of his evening away from the family and eventually retiring on 26 off 44 balls. Despite the overwhelming evidence against, he seemed sure that he didn’t face that many dot balls (24) and felt very comfortable milking the singles to mid on. However, he can rightly feel hard done by for one of those dots when he crunched a straight drive past the bowler and ran two. At the other end Watson watched on, convinced the ball was going to the boundary, but it did not reach (although this was loudly disputed) and it was deemed that Watson not moving out of his crease could not really be described as “one short”. In any event, Watson struck a quick fire 25 which left the Hoskins father and son combination to bring us to the target with plenty of time to spare.
