DCC, rather incredibly, won the toss, and batted.
Weather : Not as warm as it looked, but sunny and dry.
Our peregrinations round Derbyshire continue, to another new fixture, known only to me as the site of a famous (in our Family at least) ploughing match. Terry's directions again appeared a little variable, but we all got there in the end, to be greeted by a square ground with about a 5 degree slope, at the end of a golf course. Very nice indeed. Incredibly, Paul won the toss, (3 for 13 now, this season) and we had a bat, as we were packing batting like it was going out of fashion, down to 8 or 9 at least.
Steve Gaunt, hero of the last couple of weeks, and Kiwi opened, and treated Brailsford to a large amount of neck cricking, as ball after ball ended up in the Friesians opposite and the car park, one even hitting Rob's car, despite it being carefully parked behind the pavilion. Bet you couldn't do that again Steve?
Both reached 50 in simply awesome style, then got out pretty much straight after, letting in a 3, 4, and 5 of obvious quality in Crossy, Dean and Rob. 5 bloody runs between the 3 of them were scored, as Crossy chased a wide one and would have looked better with a rod in his hand, Dean went back to a full one, then tried to tell us it kept low (only 'cos it pitched 4 foot in front of the stumps) and Rob continued his very average run by nicking to the keeper the always unplayable at any level of cricket, medium pace, non-swinging, non-seaming ball on a length. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued. Thus, again it was left to Alec and Paul to chip in with some very useful runs, Smudge didn't really get going and Ben holed out early, and we ended up on XXX for X.
Opening up down the hill was Alec, and Smudge up it, and wickets fell regularly, with 2 in Alecs first over. Dream season or what? Some pretty good fielding, especially from Crossy, who chased it round all day and must have run a couple of miles, and some good catches held, set the stage for some more super wicket to wicket stuff by Adam, ending up with a big threefer, while Dean bowled his usual spell. (Nuff said, eh Dean?) However the piece de resistance (French accent, please) was undoubtedly Rob's first over, which disappeared to all parts of the village for 21 runs in 6 long, long balls. Not so much all-rounder as getting rounder. Finally, we wrapped it up and won by XX runs.
Hopefully back next year, in the meantime, check out Brailsford's web site at www.brailsfordcc.co.uk