Vice-captain George Walker reports on the EAPL defeat at Norwich.
A mixed forecast had been predicted all week for Saturday but when it came to it, the weather at Ingham was tremendous with hot sunshine most of the day.
It was a shame that Swardeston’s performance could not match the weather but there were a number of positives to take out from the defeat to Norwich.
After losing the toss and being asked to bat on a good wicket a good score was key, as due to league standings Norwich would have to go for whatever score we obtained so naturally the higher the better. A quick start is often the way with Peter Lambert at the top of the order and he went for 29 off just 35 balls when looking well set. Jordi Taylor then took on the mantel of the big shots launching Aaron Watson over wide mid off for a lovely six but when he departed for 38 the score was 90-2 which then immediately became 90-3 as Stephen Gray was bowled off an inside edge from Chris Borrett.
Patient batting was now required on what was clearly a very good wicket with still a number of overs to go. The dangerous Ashley Watson was keeping it tight for Norwich and he then had Lewis Denmark caught for three before Jason Reynolds was caught behind in the last over before lunch off his brother Aaron. This left Swardeston on 142-5 at lunch with Callum Taylor batting patiently on 35 not out.
A further 73 runs were added between Callum and Jeremy Elliott before the 6th wicket went with Cal caught off Ashley Watson for a well made 79. He may feel he should have scored more with a number of overs left to bat and no risks required. George Walker then fell with only another 10 runs added, chasing the extra batting bonus points to a poor shot which left Jez to bat with Mark Thomas to get the total up. Both were out caught and Michael Eccles and Sam Thelwell got the score to 267.
This would be a competitive score although on a ground and wicket at Ingham, anything can happen.
Our rotation policy of first slip gave Jordi (with a bad knee) the opportunity to drop a catch early on, but that did not cost him too much as Ecco had Aaron Watson lbw and then Sam had Ollie Higgenbottom well held by the skipper at mid-off, who stayed down for a while after aggravating his bad knee.
After Ashley was bowled by Ecco leaving Norwich 50-3, Swardeston were on a roll but a partnership from Borrett and Matarazzo swung the game the other way- They played the spin with ease with Borrett hitting a couple of clean straight sixes and Cal would admit he did not bowl the best three overs but he will bounce back.
The captain decided to turn his arm over off his short run and was very economical off his 7 overs but the breakthrough came when Jez had Matarazzo lbw to the first ball of his spell on 141-4 and then when Siyath was caught behind from Eccles we felt the tide turning.
This was definitely the case when Borrett top edged a pull shot high to square leg where Lewis took a great catch under pressure off Sam leaving norwich 219-6.
By this stage Sam and ecco were bowling well in tandom against Chris and Ollie Sutton and the overs were ticking down with the run rate moving up. What followed were a couple of loud caught behind appeals which were not given out. We felt this would have drastically altered the game as Ollie Sutton is a clean striker of the ball and he ended up on 44 not out with Chris 25 not out and the game won with 1.1 overs to go.
Fair play to Norwich for batting well, however I am sure the bowlers felt we could have been little better in the middle overs and we let a couple of chances go down in the field. What is also important is that all the top four batsman got starts on a good wicket but only Cal went onto get a score over 50. If we can convert these starts into scores then a total of well over 300 could have been achieved.
Every cloud they say, and that comes in the shape of seeing Swardeston still over 50 points clear at the top of the league with Cambridge Granta to play on Saturday.
Hope to see you all there
George
