Cricket- County Division Six (East)
Menheniot II v Tideford II
After four succesive defeats, Menheniot at last got back onto the winning track albeit by the slender margin of one wicket in the penultimate over against their near neighbours Tideford.
Dave Holland, the visiting Tideford captain won the toss and not suprisingly opted to bat first. He may well have regretted this decision as after 12 overs, Tideford were 20.0 against the Menheniot bowling attack Graham Fagg and little indian brave Grub Harrison. However that brought together Holland and Peter Luff who took the score onto 63 before the former was bowled by Fagg for 16.
Luff by this time, settling in well and building his own total up even though he edged a lot of balls through for boundries, particularly from Jeremy Randle. Keith Olver joined Luff when they enjoyed a 77 run partnership with the former contributing 32 included some fine cover shots. The runs were coming thick and fast but it was the old sage of Keith Goldsmith who, with his slow but accurate bowling, slowed the run rate down as well as taking wickets at regular intervals from 130-3 Tideford were bowled for 161 with Fagg taking 3-43 and Goldsmith 6-35. Tideford were hugely indebted to Luff,who scored 76, including 13 4s.
Menheniot, in reply, got off to a bad start with John Massey, 'promoted' from the first team, out in the third over. This brought together Bill McLoughlin and Dave Wiltshire who took the score to 45 before the former was out attempting to hook young Steve Bradbeer. Although the runs were coming quite freely off the bat, at the same halfway stage, Menheniot had 80-4 on the board. A 53 run partnership between Jim Harrison and John Strand resulted before Strand was bowled for 27. Harrison followed shortly afterwards having scored 29. This brought Andrew Keeble to the wicket. He played some text book cover drives before departing for 24 with the score on 158-9 and the last pair of Goldsmith and Fagg at the wicket. A full toss to Fagg was instantly dispatched for four giving Menheniot a slender win of one wicket.
Towards the end, two or three decisions were turned down by the club umpires which resulted in high tension. If one casts their minds back to the cricket World Cup, decisions at that level were contentious even with all the high technology at hand to international umpires. Kept in that context, the game must be played in good spirit with nothing to come between the keen sporting relationship that Menheniot have developed with Tideford over the past few years.
The game itself produced 48 boundries and a six which tells the story of a very fast outfield. Nearly all of Menheniot batsmen contributed with five players scoring 20 plus. An interesting point was Menheniot included two of the normal 1st team who found runs and wickets extremely hard to come by.
Scores - Tideford 161 (P. Luff 76; K. Olver 32; D. Holland 16; G. Fagg 3-45; K. Goldsmith 6-35) Menheniot 162 for 9 (W. McLoughlin 21; D. Wiltshire 23; J. Harrison 29; J. Handley 15; J. Strand 27; A. Keeble 24; M. Swain 2-45; D. Shaw 3-35; D. Holland 2-12)
Menheniot (19 points) beat Tideford (8 points) by 1 wicket.