Another toss, another win.

Having recently invested in a selection of ‘light’ waterproof clothing, come Tuesday of last week, a complete game of cricket looked unlikely. Those residing in the Royal Hampton Court (except Blobz), as per tradition, arose to the bearded warriors alarm clock. After the 15^th alarm/snooze combination, the wick tripod was awake, refreshed and out of the house and in record time.

With ‘The Wick’ currently looking like they may require a play off place to qualify for Europe, an emphasis was placed on the importance of a performance. Not only to secure maximum points, but to match that of a side who are against travelling to the deepest corner of the eastern bloc, only to come home with a losing draw and no away goal.

Toss (verb) – throw (something) somewhere lightly or casually.

There has been nothing ‘light’ nor ‘casual’ about flipping the coin this season. A staggering 4 from 6 is a large part of the winning formula. “Win the toss and the rest of the stats take care of themselves… as reflected in the screenshot below.

With the captain’s day all but over, the rest of this marvellously assembled side, set about the task at hand, Week 6 – Cobham Avorians.

A new look new ball pairing of Tanya and Tid started plugging away in all the right areas. It became apparent, that with a combined age more suitable to a pairing on Strictly Come Dancing (~90), the wick were swimming in experience. You can’t just buy experience.

As it happens, while we couldn’t purchase the bottled-up experience, the Cobham batsmen seemed equally unable to procure their runs and were quickly reduced to 22-3 (Goodwin 6-34-2) (Tong 11-19-2). Despite the score line, the Avorians batsman continued to apply a method more commonly spotted on a golf course; Every single ball brought either an aerial chance, a near run-out or a well-timed hit to the fence. What happened next changed not only the course of the game, but created its own chapter in wick folklore. Unfortunately, this Match report simply won’t do it justice.

Knowing that a creative bowling change was required, the aforementioned ‘tosser’ threw the ball in the direction of Ed Charlton (Chris Jordan to some), who was more than happy to turn his arm over for the first time this year. Despite bowling his usual mix of Yorkers, full tosses and half trackers, Chris finally dug one in bringing the top edge out to deep square leg. With about 20 metres to cover, ‘The Bearded Boy-Wonder’ got around, taking the ball – body horizontal to the turf. This moment was later to be described by Tiddy as “The best catch he has seen at HQ in 20 years” … some claim.

Tidy spells from both Sash and Ed kept us in the game without really forfeiting too many runs.  (Blobz somehow dropping an absolute sitter, off the same bowling).

With the innings drifting towards a painful death, Mik looked to provide the sparks required before tea. He came into the attack at 110-4 and produced a game changing spell (8-36-5). Other than a few loose ones, he really didn’t put a foot wrong. Well bowled Micky.

150 All out looked very chase able at the tea break.

It turns out it was… Not many specifics are required on our batting, other than we went about the chase and completed it without fault. A good solid stand between Blobz and MattyD setup a quickfire contribution from Mikey and a classy 1* in Caleb’s column.

The real highlight was watching a well-oiled Matty D go about the total. A superbly paced 92* put Cobham to the sword and signed off a thoroughly comprehensive win, closing the game with a few big blobz.

Next week sees us travel to local rivals Haselmere. We hope to party our way back down the A3 with 24 points. Watch this Space.

#UpTheWick.