Flood, Fire and Pesky Lengths

The first home game of the season saw the Park entertaining (?!) Grove in conditions more akin to Shackletons great Arctic odyssey as Footscray once agian lived up to its reputation as the coldest and windiest place in all of, er, well, Eltham.

With Skipper Fowdy maintaining a proud new Prospect Park tradition of losing the toss, and being invited to bat, the skipper himself and Kenny Robotham opened the innings, while the rest of the Park batsmen tried to huddle into the scorebox and broke out the kendal mint cake. The first ball of the innings saw a gentle lobbing ball bounce halfway down the pitch and Kenny have a big swish as it looped back down to earth. Kenny missed, the ball hit the off stump and Park were 0 for 1. Dave Robotham replaced brother Kenny and squared up to the wicket. the next ball came down, leg-side, Dave leans back and swipes, the ball comes off the end of the bat and somehow loops back over to the slips where its snapped up. Park, 0 for 2 in 2 balls ! With Skipper Fowdy looking on helplessly at the non strikers end Big Jim Flood strides out to the crease with the words "First game of the season and I'm in on a hat-trick". Not to fear though as Jim gets down the wicket to snuff out the LBW appeal and keep the hat-trick at bay. With the Park in all sorts of bother, Darran and Jim eased their way into the game an set about slowly repairing the damage. After ten overs, 14 runs, after 20, 32 runs, and at 25 overs Park were 38 for 2. With both batsmen now well set, the runs started to flow a little easier and the odd 4 punctuated the well run 1's and 2's. In the 32nd over, the partnership was broken as the Skipper was caught and bowled off a very full delivery from Sookoo for once again, 'a typical Captains knock' (copyright D. Fowdy 2002). At 68 for 3, Tim Gannon came in to bat but only made a single before an off cutter found its way through a gate you could have driven a bus through and took the leg stump. Park at 75 for 4, and with 36 overs gone, in need of pushing the rate up. By this point Jim was really playing his shots and driving at the ball indiscriminately. With Paul Thompson joining him at the crease, these two made a concerted attack on the bowling. With Jim regularly hitting the boundary and Thommo joining the fun the score started to rattle up. This pair added 22 in 6 overs before Thommo was bowled for a quickfire 10 to leave Park 97 for 5 after 42 overs. Dave Brupacher came in at no.7 and set about giving Jim the strike (including making him run a 3 !) and Jim swung with great success at virtually every ball and fair galloped between the wickets to keep the runs coming ! At the finish Jim was a superb 67 not out and Bru 8 not out and Park had made respectability with 132 for 5 off 48 overs.

After a disastrous start Park came back well to make a score thanks to two outstanding performances and 132 gave the bowlers a chance on a pitch that was staying low and cutting laterally.

After getting as much hot tea down their necks as possible and attempting to hide in various corners of the bar and changing rooms, the Park players were eventually forced out into the windswept plains of Footscray to endure that well known English torture of Fielding. Paul Moss and Bill Partridge performed the opening bowling honours, and both were right on the spot from the start. It was to be Bill who made the early breakthrough, inducing a mistimed lofted drive from Hammond that Paul Thompson called early for and caught well at extra cover. With Grove at 7 for 1 the Park pressed on but there was to be no further breakthrough as Pope and Burgess took control of the innings, Pope in particular never looking in any trouble and seemed to take runs at will. A double bowling change saw Dave Partridge and John Ling replace Bill and Mossy and it wasn't long before Lingo had bowled Burgess for 20 to put Grove on 67 for 2. Again Grove consolidated well after the loss of a wicket and added another 25 before Dave bowled Maloney for 9. With Grove on 102 for 3, Prospect Park were struggling, particularly with Pope dictating the pace of the innings from one end. Park were trying to close down the batsmen at the other end to keep Pope at the non-strikers but they couldnt stop the flow of singles through square leg and the Grove batsmen rotated the strike with ease. With just a few overs remaining Fowdy brought spin (?) twins (?!) Thompson and Gannon on and prayed for a miracle but there were just two few runs to play with. Thommo managed to trap Carroll to a neat stumping by Bru but the runs kept coming and Grove entered the last over with only one run required to win. With the first 3 balls conceding no runs, hopes were briefly raised only to be dashed when the fourth ball was flicked over the in field for four. Grove won the match at a canter with 136 for 4.

In the end, a few more runs were needed to put the pressure on Grove, but the way they batted they looked capable of reaching anything we set them.

Despite another fine perfromance from Darran Fowdy, theres only one man in it this week as the MOM goes to Jim Flood for a superb half century on his first outing of the summer. Jim hit the ball as hard as I've ever seen him and even seemed to be running those singles quicker than ever, well done sir !