There are things you learn from the year’s road-trip to Rye. Firstly you were right first time, it has always been and continues to be too far away. Secondly that if you are going to drive there a good way to get there is driven by Sybil Warmisham in a Range Rover, taking the scenic route through the beautiful Sussex countryside. And thirdly that Curly Pummell’s ideal day is to get up about 12, play X-Box for 8 hours straight, get blocked by other gamer’s on Twitter with his only disruption being to take in the latest episode of EastEnders.
So with a foolish promise to write the match report with an EastEnders theme should we win, with 30 points in the bag, here goes.
The long trip to Rye proved a good one for the 2s as a dominant display with the ball enabled us to take home a first win of the season and 30 points. However it wasn’t without a wobble at the end as with victory in sight we did our best to nearly Ricky Butcher a game that was pretty much won.
Winning the toss, skipper Matt Charman elected to bowl. Rye made a slow but decent start as Sachin Jha and Martin Duffield dealt well with a damp pitch and good opening spells from Dirty Den Woods and Bobby ‘Trish’ Barnes. Jha should have gone early off Den Woods but Akeem Ifill spilled a chance he would normally snap up and it was only a fantastic caught and bowled from Trish that broke the partnership. 35-1 became 42-3 as Trish (3-20) and Akeem tightened the screw. Akeem was unlucky as chances went down off his bowling including one in the deep that Stephen Cromb looked safe under. Unfortunately he dropped it like Phil Mitchell would throw away an orange juice passed to him that had no vodka in it. An aerial but effective innings from Harry Rhys Jones was the pick of the Rye innings as a combination of dropped catches and some hitting brought him 32. Joe Maskell dropping one hit straight at him was probably as Danny Dyer as it gets. But it was a good bit of fielding from debutant Lewis Mamoany which finally got him run-out.
However the run-rate dried up and pressure told as bowling changes brought wickets for Charman (2-18 including a horrible ball that got a Nasty Nick), Maskell (2-19) and McCreadie who bowled a great spell (4 overs, 1 for 5). Rye’s innings never really got going and I was surprised they didn’t try and really up the rate at any point. They seemed quite happy with a lot of Dot Cotton balls. The final ball of the innings took the final wicket for Cromb with an assist for Teddy who challenged the bat to try and hit one to the Alfie Moon. Huge swing. Fail. All out 109.
Tea was taken in the Vic, and very nice it was too, though no pie, mash, eels and liquor in this neck of East London however it was very well received.
Curly and TT opened up and unfortunately Curly missed a straight one from Nick Paine early. In came Akeem Ifill and a game changing cameo from him looked like taking the game away from Rye as 58 runs from him later (including a number of huge Max Brannings) we were 89-1. Akeem in form hits it Wellard (sorry). However we like to make things difficult and when Akeem went Pat-ting one back to the bowler we did our best to let Rye into a game they had not previously been in and looked like getting Ethel out of (again sorry). Through some good bowling, a bit of bad luck and some stupid shots trying to just get it done we were suddenly 103-6. This became 107-7 as Maskell was stumped having a Big Mo but luckily Lewis Mamoany and Teddy Churchyard showed more intelligence and got us over the line for the 30 points. 20 more runs to chase and it could have been very nervy. The author might have needed to see Doctor Legg if we had failed to chase it down from the position we were in and Arthur Fowler’d it up. Anyhow a good win and we move onto next week.
Special mentions to Bobby he is such a handful when he gets it right and a great caught and bowled, Apollo for his spell and Lewis who bought straight into the 2s ethos from ball one with a runout and nerveless batting at the end. But Akeem for his brutal knock gets MOM – well played Akeem.