Sunday saw us have the first of this season's friendly fixtures against a capable and friendly team called The Gardeners. When "Tooley" (Teddington's Club Captain, Matt O'Toole) went to meet their captain before the game, three of their players had to agree whose turn it was!
Matt won the toss and seeing as it was a warm day, we were playing on the 1st team square and we had a good side, stuck us in. Richard Bennett and Hasan Aziz opened and got us off to a great start, Richard playing particularly well off his legs. Hasan finished on a well made 51 (10 x 4s) when he went for a wander down the pitch and was stumped. Richard made a measured 40 (4 x 4s) and was clearly frustrated not to have turned it into a bigger score, when he was out caught. Young Ed Lord then made a useful 17. At this point. we'd got to 146-5. Then Jamie Letten, who had been ticking along nicely on his debut for the Club XI and Tooley (40) managed to take us up to 217 before Tooley swung at a straight one and was skittled by their captain. Jamie managed to get to 55* by the time we'd finished on 233-7 off our 40 overs. Not too shabby.
Their run chase.... well, what can I say? We don't often expect the opposition to chase down 200+ on a Sunday, but they did. Jamie and Shaz both took a wicket each before their No 3 (120*) and No 4 batsmen (61*) calmly kept on hitting the ball wherever they liked and took the game away from us. Their partnership was pretty faultless and chanceless, to be fair and Tooley even threw all 11 bowlers at them, even taking his green pads (don't ask) off at drinks to have a go with his leg spin (if you can call it that).
This game also set a new record for the club (probably) as Mike Shufflebotham ("Shuffs") also turned out for us today and apparently this marked a 20 year run of him appearing at least once a season for a Teddington XI. Not a bad effort at all.