A change-up delivery....

A good mixture of Sunday games to look back on in today's edition.

4th May 1999 

I always like to look at the oldest scorecard I can find, and according to Play Cricket the 3rds played a friendly against Grindleford on Tuesday 4th May 1999. I assume that the date is wrong but I think the rest of the scorecard is correct, and there is a return fixture later in the year so I'm guessing that Grindleford were the only club using Play Cricket in the 90s!

Anyway, 21 years ago the third team batted first and were bowled out for 116 in 45 overs. Phil Mintoft top scoring with 30. They were lower scoring days back then as this proved too much for Grindleford, who were bowled out for 73 in reply. The good thing about the 3rds batting first in the days before bowling restrictions is that the juniors didn't have to watch John Hadfield bowl all 23 overs from one end, he did however take 5-18 in this match.

1st May 2005 

Not a particularly eventful game away at Kirkby Portland although the Sunday team did manage to successfully defend 135. Milly top scored for CACC with 27, Johnno and Barry Eke taking 3 wickets each to restrict Kirkby to 128.

The reason I include this match is because it featured the delivery that is now referred to as "The Stroke Ball", where short-term CACC Sunday team member James Grant decided to mix it up a bit by bowling a ball whilst keeping his front arm down by his side throughout the delivery. I think Flintoff may have done this in a match before but a quick YouTube search has not confirmed this. Despite being a novel idea, in practice it came out as a very slow beamer which caused the batsman to stand back and shout "BLEEDING 'ELL" before the ball plonked into his belly. Funnily enough the stroke ball was not attempted again.

3rd May 2009 

An entertaining scorecard which shows the Sunday team away at Clowne under the captaincy of A Cookwood. An amalgamation of two great CACC captains Cookson and Lockwood meant we were in safe hands here!

Batting first there were two big contributions from Brett, firstly in scoring 90 but more importantly running Grant out for 0 to ensure that CACC reached a decent total of 183. Unfortunately this was well shy of a competitive score as it turned out, with Clowne knocking the runs off just two wickets down despite a testing opening spell from P Wallis, who I guess is Freddie! The Cookwood captaincy had one last throw of the dice bringing Brett on to bowl at the end, but despite looking threatening in the warm up, he could only return figures of 0-4 from his 0.1 overs.

5 May 2013 

A special mention for Hex who was dismissed for a golden duck opening the batting at Stonelow against Spital. Making the long walk back I'm sure he had thoughts of being hard done by, getting a good ball, and that it appeared to be a tricky wicket which anyone will struggle to ever get in on. His opening partner Rodge finished on 138 and Loz made 181 batting at 3 as CACC reached 385/4 from their 40 overs. Unlucky Hex.

That's all for this weekend, thank you for reading, I hope you have enjoyed!

CT
CACC