I'm not sure when was the last the club managed to arrange a pre-season friendly for the 4th XI, but we managed it this year and the opposition even turned up this time (Burgh Heath went to Chessington instead of Teddington when we tried to arrange a friendly with them last year!).
In any case, enough of them arrived for us to start at 1.50pm and having won the toss, Matt O'Toole decided to put us in as, by that time, we only had 9 players ourselves (you'll never guess who was late - TK!) and a bit of rain was forecast for later, so some players had expressed the wish to get some pre-season batting practice in.
Dilan Camball and Phil 'Headless' Eastland opened for TCC and managed to get us to 19, before Phil played on. Hasan Aziz only added 4 before being out LBW and Dilan followed soon after. 34-3. Not a great start. However, Euan Munday started to play nicely and Dave Pearce added a couple of boundaries before he too headed back to the pavilion. Matt O'Toole did pretty much the same as Dave (altho he was only 50/50 as to whether he hit a 'bump' ball to a fielder, but had decided to walk because a) it was a friendly and b) a really old fella had caught it)). Shemal Camball (Dilan's younger brother) didn't last long either and we were 101-6 by this stage. Archie Talman and Euan then managed to bat very sensibly, Archie (15*) rotating the strike and leaving Euan to score at the other end. Euan finished on a very credible 78. You can see him getting to 50 on our official Youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5KmZ8gJENc). TCC had posted 166-7 from 35 overs.
Then the rain arrived. Covers on. Early tea. The first part of their reply offered little for us, although Tauseef Khan (TK), Dilan and Archie all moved the ball through the air well. TK managed to get one wicket at 19-1, but their #1 and #3 then managed to add 107 runs without further loss. Nick Lockwood arrived to join the fray and bring us to 11 players, but only managed 1 over. Burgh Heath, to be fair, managed the required run rate and rarely looked uncomfortable during the chase. Stan Nicholson returned very respectable figures of 4-0-25-0, but pick of our bowlers was probably Hasan Aziz, who returned very good figures of 5-0-16-2. The end of the innings involved some minor drama. With a handful of runs needed, Shemal threw the ball on the bounce ball back to O'Toole (keeping). An errant tuft of grass on the square caused the ball to pop straight into Tooley's face, knocking off his glasses and giving him a nice cut on his nose. Pads off (Dave took over). Off for a quick patch up from Josh Knappett and Tooley then came back on to find Burgh Heath only needed 1 run to win. Matt (possibly a little dazed) asked Stan who was bowling. 'You are!' came the reply. OK, time for a bit of a cameo. Still bleeding, Tooley first threw a grenade (dot ball), but followed up with a quicker delivery which pitched just outside leg, went through the gate and took out leg stump. He couldn't follow up with anything more dramatic, though, as he then threw down a wide, giving the win to the opposition. Still, 0.2-0-1-1 gives him a good strike rate, if nothing else! :)
A very good natured game, played in the right spirit (and Tooley only had to spend 3 hours in A&E afterwards).