Upminister B 257
GPRCC 282
After a couple of tricky openers, Gidea Park sprung to life when turning out against Upminister B away at Coopers school with an impressive and slightly unexpected victory.
Happily put into field, the players continued to encourage the younger, less-experienced bowlers as they held the home side to 229 after 8 overs, despite 21 points in extras and no wickets. However from that moment things were to change dramatically.
Recently-injured George Thompson showed no ill-effects as he clean-bowled the first of his two victims in the 10th over and only 8 further runs were given away before off-spinner Tobias Prigg confused his opponent in the 14th, and the floodgates opened.
Zak Knapman, eventual man-of-the-match, had a direct hit from around 20-yards to dismiss the same player whilst the other two wickets fell to an unlucky run-out and a great ball from Amar Dhanjal.
Having kept the home side to only 15 runs from the last 8 overs, the visitors had an achievable target of 258 and progress was steady despite an early wicket. 211 after 4, 222 after 8 and 237 after 12 was just about on target if there were no losses and everyone had played their part up until then, but it was going to be close.
Having shown excellent calling and running in their last match, the same was expected of Thompson and Olli Daniels but the pairing was amended to to injury to the latter and Zak Knapman stepped in to make the 4th pairing.
Few words needed when putting up the figures. Partnership of 40 (21 ZK, 19GT) sharing six boundaries and just three dot balls was the most impressive tally, and by the time the 16th over was completed GPRCC were 279 and 21 clear.
The extra pairing of Ryan Bhopari and Simeon Barker were sent in to defend the total having scored 10 between them in their separate spells and they did the job with aplomb, allowing a wide and single bye to interfere with 22 dot balls.
A game played in good spirit that was turned on it's head at a couple of intervals, this was certainly a confidence boost to many of the younger players, a couple of whom were experiencing their first league win.
Each member of the away team did their bit to help the cause and if continuing the comradeship shown, this could be the catalyst for a number of good results.