This is my 3rd game of the year, been missing with weddings & such all year so far.
Playing some weird, annoying split innings format in the doldrums.
We bowled first*, had the (un-defeated, not-been-bowled-out-yet) top side. Took a couple early, then they shut up shop after we got one of their good bats out pretty cheaply off a pretty sharp catch pumelled to square leg. Had 7 overs myself, 1 tough-ish dropped keeper chance, inside edge so he threw himself down leg then went back out off the pad - 0/10 or so, good to get a bit of an extended bowl & knock off a bit of rust.
3/90 after the first 32 over session, not too bad a result.
Then we had a bat after tea, lost 1 very early, then a couple of OK partnerships, ended up on a relatively uneventful 4/100 after our 32, roughly even half-way through - pretty happy about, against a relatively handy side.
So we resume yesterday on 4/100, couple of avoidable stupid wickets early, then a couple of unfortunately unavoidable stupid wickets. I headed in at 9 about 7/150 after a mini-collapse, 20 overs left if we got there. Again just (selfishly) took it as an opportunity to spend some time in the middle early in (my) season. They had reasonably consistent bowling we had to work through, one kid left arm medium who'll end up being pretty handy, bowling a pretty good line coming back into the right handers. another kid getting good away shape but a bit wayward, one kid bowling a good shape but a bit short, and one of their crafty old blokes nipping it around. The ground was pinging around, good value for shots. Had a good partnership of 20 or 30 with the number 8 before he went out, had to try and keep our #10, who's a classic old lower-grade tail-end tonker to playing along the ground, which we did pretty comfortably for a while before he got a good yorker, leaving me & the #11, who's a pretty clear-cut #11 but does have the advantage of batting the wrong way around.
By that stage I was feeling pretty comfortable, so it became a game of farming strike a bit & letting him getting his eye in, pushing singles around when & where we could. Which we managed to do pretty successfully, keeping them in the field, not giving them any chances & making them work. Sure enough their heads started to drop a bit, made more & more fielding errors and got a few more runs than we should have. Really let the arms free with about 4-5 overs left, let my partner know there was no harm in having a crack, he managed to hit a couple as well, and we ended up taking 15 or so off their last two overs, and held onto our wickets for a #10 partnership of 63 and a total of 9/248. Ended up on 65 not out myself, he was on a pretty handy 15
Which then left us to hold them to under about 155 off their 32. Took a while to get the first, but that became two as both the not-out batsmen overnight went within about 2 overs, to a good diving keeper catch and a pretty unexpected runout from one of our older blokes. They fought back a bit, a good partnership of 40 or so where their other good bat took to my bowling a bit, but I got him out to a clever plan (OK...may not be true) holing out at deep square.Then another good partnership, another two wickets in quick succession, then one of their kids came in & absolutely heaved a couple to all points, pushing them along to about 210 with 5-6 overs left and a few nerves on our part. At which point we hd him run out, two steps and a bat in the air from his crease, unbelievably given (well, maybe not) not out. Two balls later, I had him slicing one straight up in the air to about 4 steps off the pitch, keeper made good position, and somehow dropped it. Got him a ball or two later, clean bowled which took the wind out of them, and we rolled them about 20 short for a pretty tense, very enjoyable win.