Report by DRB

With monsoon like conditions for the previous week it came as a bit of a shock to find on Sunday morning that our 1^st visit in 5 years to Hunslet Nelson was still on, especially as in the last 4 years this fixture had succumbed to the weather. The Sunday dinner crew headed to the Harvester public house to disappointingly find out that the days normal roast, i.e. roast beef was not on the menu! Tough decisions  had to be made for an alternative feed.
With 3 players dropping out at the last minute we were saved by the Rawdon 3^rd XI fixture at Follifoot having an early postponement so the Jesters side took on a youthful look with the addition of Matt Hill (batting in a pistachio nut shaped helmet & using his uncle Johns old bat), Ben Morley (the cheeky one ) & brother Trev Penny ( the even cheekier one ).
On arrival at the venue we found the ground in incredibly good condition & the facilities substantially improved from our last visit.
Matt McCallum given another chance to open the batting was set some minimum score targets & proceeded to miss a straight one so it was left to Ben ( who impressed despite a large ground & slow outfield) & Neil ( back after a long finger injury) to put stability into the innings. This left an opportunity for a battle of the giants in the traditional boundary bowls which resulted in Scottie been pushed into 3^rd while the skipper & RL had to go to a sudden death bowl out to decide the winner which the latter won with a lucky bounce in.
RL with his non stop criticism of umpires got to see the other side of the fence while doing his stint as an official as Ben (on debut) got a little edge behind which the acting ump’ totally missed.
With boundaries hard to come by the innings was given some impetus by the ‘held back’ Macca who was itching to get to the wicket & smashed some big hits to get us up to a very good score in the conditions.
After a terrific tea (as always at this fixture) the bowling was opened up by Trev (bowling a great line for a left hander but they only had right handers) & Ritchie who becomes the 27^th member of the Jesters 100 appearances club, & the 1^st since Mick “moose head” Orchard; Both picked up a wicket before giving way to Scottie who succeeded in his quest to move back above Dale in the season top wicket taker comp’.
Despite steady wickets the Hunslet innings was been held together by M. Savery with a powerful innings. It took the skipper who was not impressed by the other bowlers abilities to give him a catch to do the job for himself with another “Doug Walters” type victim.
We hope it is not another 5 years before our next visit to this venue as we have always though Hunslet Nelson play Sunday friendlies just as they should be played – competitively but with lots of fun.
 

catching competition update

S.Scott - 1  D.Bell - 6  RL - 2 Pod - 1

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