Zed's Diary
Follow our new 3rd Team skipper on his journey onwards and upwards. From humble beginnings with the A Team, Zed has now assumed charge of the 3rds. With the 2nd team captaincy next in his sights Zed continues his journey to the top.

Accrington v Rishton 3rd 11

Rishton 162-8 Accrington 117

On an overcast afternoon I managed to lose the toss for the fourth time in a row and Rishton surprisingly decided to bat first. They managed to get to 162-8. Our catching was awful again. At least I now why none of us in the team seem to catch a cold!. A total of 8 catches were dropped and could have been a lot worse without the cat like reflexes of Sam the Sheep who took 3 very good catches. Rishton realistically should have been out for no more than a 100. In 5 matches we have been chasing targets, and in these games we have dropped some 20-25 catches. It's not on, the under 11's manage to grasp more....even monkeys can catch and juggle why cant we! Its something that seriously needs to be addressed as the problem is endemic from firsts down to thirds. Forget about getting batting and bowling coaches on Tuesday night practices, ask NASA to send some of their space monkeys down to give us catching practice! Wickets were shared around, Ian Johnson managed 3-31 off 10 overs ,followed by Waqas( 2-31), Si Hanson (2-45) and myself (1-18) all off each bowlers 10 overs respectively.

Our batting began solidly as Waqas played another fluent knock of 24 before getting out and at that point we stood at 58-3 off 15 overs. Out of the blue our experienced middle order seemed to loose their heads (including myself) as we decided to disastrously slog our way to the target, resulting in us collapsing to 80-7. Myself (7 runs), Ian Johnson (8 runs), D Hargreaves (11) and Paul burrows (0 runs) between us have a 100 years of cricketing experience.Despite having this depth and richness in experience and knowledge pre dated since the era of W G Grace for some of us, we seemed to have lost our 'marbles' and common sense. This was highlighted and shown up through the sensible batting of Si (16), Waqas, Matty (11) and Ormy (8) who all played themselves in, looked for their ones and two and surely if we the experienced players couldn't do it we couldn't expect the youngsters to chase the target down! we eventually succumbed to being bowled out for 117 and handed Rishton their first victory of the season. We actually deserved to loose this match on the account of our catching or lack of it should I say and our middle order!

To be beaten by a Rishton team that had the manners and charm skills of Rab C Nesbitt is not good enough...we let our selves down big time and this was by far the worst performance of the season. On the plus side the performance of the youngsters in the team stood out again and so did the fielding performance of Sam Heap who is a welcome addition to the field. The latters unbounded enthusiasm, effort and natural ability in the field, in addition to his 'mouth' are a huge plus to us,so keep it up 'cock'!. In general this was a sheepish defeat and the performance was about as gritty and tough to make as burnt toast. With that in mind we are somewhat embarrassed at present to loose against a team whose physical location is seriously being considered by Hollywood for its future remake of captain Nemo's '20,000 leagues under the sea' as Rishtons recent performances at all levels has enhanced its appeal...but the way we played in this match, Hollywood will have an optional location of Accrington for this feature film.