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.

Todmorden v Accrington 3rd 11

Todmorden 61 all out v Accrington 143 all out

We travelled over the Pennines and ventured into the time zone that is Todmorden and Yorkshire, passing horse riding aristocrats, local peasants pulling wagons of hay and even encountering someone carrying a water bucket on their head. Anyway enough of the history lesson, I managed to lose a sixth consecutive toss and in future am on the verge of sending one of my team mates to do the 'tossing' . Although my team is full of good tossers, the only problem would be that some of them would take the meaning literally (I think some of them have got hearing problems....considering half the team is over 35) and seeing one of these guys 'toss' at the square is not a healthy site. The Tod captain surprisingly asked us to bat first, which is what I would have done anyway. We were bowled out for 143 with 17 overs left .

The mainstay of this innings was Scott Hudson with a fine 69 (standing in for the batting child prodigy Waqas Ahmed), The only other innings of note was Sam Heap who made a free flowing 17 before being given caught behind, Sam claimed he did not touch the ball even though the bat he flung across the changing room had a chunk missing from the side and also there was a 'nick' heard as far away as Accrington. People there first mistook the noise for a lorry crashing, that's how noisy it was! Slight exaggeration here.... but to be honest the only way Sam can justifiably be out is if he is bowled and even then he'll probably ask the leg umpire if the bowler over stepped! The only reason I'm having a go at the poor lad is that the *** flung his helmet in the changing rooms after he got dismissed, problem was that my leg cushioned the impact his helmet was going to make on the floor!

It was our turn to bowl and with grey clouds hanging over us, the omens weren't looking to good but we did fancy our chances and in next to no time we reduced the opposition to 37-4 off 14 overs. Scott Hudson was having a memorable match as he accounted for all four wickets that fell but the pressure was mainly being put on from the other end by Scott Eaton who was very unfortunate not to get a wicket as he troubled all the batters that came to the crease.

He seemed to be moving the ball and swinging it at times (bearing in mind that Scott E is one of the best 'swingers' in town, this is no surprise). The heavens then opened up and the rain came pouring down,we made a dash for the changing rooms. Yorkshire's population is not renowned for its intellect and this was confirmed as the Tod players forgot to put the covers on while it was raining quite heavily (I don't think they realized that the square would play alot worse when wet, especially since they were batting) and had to be reminded by one of our players!. When they did finally put the covers, as they were walking back to the changing rooms the wind decided to play a trick on them and blew the covers off (they forgot to put the pegs in to hold the covers!).....'e by gum duck'.

We came back out with 4 overs and 10 runs taken off. Tod required 133 runs off another 27 overs. before we knew it the last 6 Tod batters came in and went back to the dressing room before you could say 'Geoffrey Boycott'. In the end Tod all out for 61. Scott Hudson had figures of 4-20 off 7 overs, Ian Johnson 3.4-1-9-4 and myself 3-1-2-2.

Our fielding in the match was awesome and we took some tremendous catches (looking like a completely different team from the week before). One of the best catches anyone will ever see was taken by Dave Hargreaves who came running in from the boundary and managed to scoop the catch above the grass by diving full stretch. The fielding of Sam Heap and Dave would not be out of place in the first team, at times it would quite easily put them into shame. The latter in particular despite his years or should I say his wealth and depth of experience is like a classic sports car....still performing!. Another win at last.