Harberton mug Strongroom!
Harberton, Devon, 6/5/2015
Harberton won by 9 wickets
Strongroom: 99 [R.Woolhouse 52]
Harberton: 101-1
View the Scorecard
We mostly arrived at Harberton in good time, in a bid to avoid the usual driving through narrow Devonian lanes at high speed. Grant hired a minibus, and en route took several Strongroomers to visit a bat manufacturer in the Salisbury plain. This enabled both Grant and Joe to top-up their burgeoning bat collection.
However, we still started with 8 players - but the key thing was the weather was fine. Harberton opened up with one ‘donkey-drop’ bowler - a popular rural concept which sadly the majority of Strongroom urbanites were very unfamiliar with. And so it proved, as a number of out top-order lost their heads, and their wickets, in trying to slam him out of the ground. The only Strongroomer to maintain a cool head was Rich Woolhouse - a welcome returnee to the Devon tour. Rich went onto complete a gutsy 50, characterised by his wily craftsmanship in knowing how to get to 50. Otherwise, our innings was nothing short of a disaster, and we limped to 99 all out. .
Based on having never lost at Harberton before, we were partly in shock, and partly thinking we would still engineer an unlikely victory.
As it was, Harberton easily overcame our paltry total, for the loss of just one wicket. The two openers batted very well, and Jon G took the only wicket to fall, though Asif was the pick of the Strongroom bowlers. Harberton fully deserved this victory - their first in five attempts. As usual, we headed off to the Church House Inn and had a great night of top notch pub food, beer, cricket-talk and darts.
Written By: J.Gower
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