Mannofield Keep on Rolling....

Former Skipper Innes took the reins for the day on one of the best road trips of the season to the lovely surroundings of Arbroath.

Before the side had even left Mannofield, Innes was reminded why he rescinded control a few seasons ago as it became quickly apparent that organising 11 grown manno-adults is an exercise in futility. In fact, the junior members of the team were the organised ones.....fully intact and ready to do battle....whilst the elder statesmen did nothing to lead from the front by giving a series of terrible excuses for their disorganised nature. Naming no names, but the personal favourite was “i’ve forgotten where my car is so you’ll have to come and pick me up” (Shay).

This also wasn’t helped on the way down the road by a stop to carry out some minor surgery to Phil’s truck to make sure there were no deaths on the way down there, and a ensuing telephone call to Niv telling him to take toss on the captains behalf as there was 15 mins to start time and he was in Brechin. Instructed to win and bowl, he lost and we were batting – great news considering both openers were at the side of the road 15 miles away pulling bits off a truck bumper. Anyway, Arbroath being the good lads that they are understood the difficulty we had and we were given 10 mins grace to sort out our mechanical problem.

And now onto the cricket. A very quick padding up session and Innes and Shay made their way to the middle for a first look at the wicket. The openers Hurst and Fleming bowled some very tight lines and were getting a lot of joy out of the early moisture in the deck....making runs very tough to come by wiith both openers really struggling to get bat on ball on a wicket that wasn’t really coming on. Indeed, given a bit more luck Arbroath could have had both men out early doors as they tried to force things along with some risky shots and even riskier singles. At the ten over mark only 16 runs were scored with 8 of them off the bat, which tells a story. After that however, both settled into a bit of rythym and after a few boundaries, took the run rate up to 3’s before Innes fell in the 17th over. Shay followed soon after and Calum Martin and Mark Assiter were brought together. Both grafted their way forward before Martin fell in unfortunate circumstances, chipping one up when he was just looking set. Assiter continued on for a beautifully assured 41 which deserved a 50 for his efforts. A couple of minor cameos from Basher and Rory Martin brought the final total for the Mannofield men up to a solid 198 for 9 off their 45, which included a massive 6 onto the road off the last ball of the innings from young Martin

I’d just like to add at this point that the teas were incredible.

In reply, Mannofield were quickly in about the wickets. Fraser "Xavi" Proud, who is having a brilliant start to the season with both bat and ball, was getting a lot off nibble off the deck and he ripped through the Arbroath top order, taking the first 5 wickets...all bowled, returning figures of 5 for 25. He was ably assisted by Basher, Assiter, Chandu and Rory Martin, who in particular had a very tidy spell of 1 for only 11 off his 7 overs. Arbroath had slumped to 67 for 7, and but for a composed knock by Fleming for 39 and a great deal of complacency in the field, things should have been closed out earlier. Some genuinely terrible dropped catches, FAR too many wides, some overthrows an a penalty 5 byes from the ball hitting the keeper's lid behind him were all things that could have cost us on another day but luckily this was not the case and Mannofield managed to bowl out Arbroath for 127 and seal the victory by 71 runs.

In the coming weeks the basic mistakes will need to be cut out in order to keep the 100% record going-With a lot of tough games coming up, we won't be able to afford to only play 3/4 of a match to full capacity and expect to bring home 25 points, that's for sure.

And guys...for Rene's sake take a bit more responsibility in sorting your stuff out next week, eh? ;)