The college have had a successful season following their pre season tour to Sri Lanka, so expectations were high as recently the 1st X1 had also reached the final of the Langdale Trophy played the week before at Sussex County Ground in Hove. Many of the players for the OBA were recent leavers and had played in this tournament, in fact their were 4 previous captains of the college X1 selected to play against Charterhouse, who are one of the closest old boy sides to us, so the game was billed as a local derby. The two sides had met in 2010 and the Old Brightonians had lost. With no club clash for cup games we were able to field a stronger side than previous years and therefor went into the game with optimism of revenge.
Sunday arrived and unfortunately the weather had closed in. When the team arrived at the home ground there was constant rain and the start was put back to 2pm with a restriction of 40 overs per side.
Adam Davies OB captain won the toss and we elected to bat hoping that the wet ball would hamper the Charterhouse opening attack. Unfortunately this was not the case. Their opening attack routed our top order and by the end of over 8 we were 44 for 6. A mixture of poor shot selection, bad luck and excellent bowling. Ollie Gatting had the bad luck by being given out caught off his forearm with the seam mark clearly visible when returning to the pavilion. The recovery work in the middle order was done excellently by Hugh Richards (41) and Jethro Menzies (29) who added 71 together. With 12 overs remaining we needed to set a challenging score in bad light and wanted the tail to wag. This was not to be the case and we were bowled out in the 34th over for 133. Charterhouse were immediately put under pressure when it was their turn to bat and the opening attack of Jethro Menzies and Charles Davies had their batters in trouble. Due to their endeavours and Jamie Thornely & Josh Hayward we had the opposition 41-4. We also had a couple of shouts for caught behind by Hugh Richards and LBW's turned down. TV reviews would I am sure put us in the driving seat. However this was the turning point and Charterhouse gained momentum and only lost one more wicket on the way to victory. The pick of the bowlers for us were Jethro Menzies (2 for 24) and Josh Hayward (1 for 27) from their 8 overs.
We wished Charterhouse good luck for the next round and look forward to our fixture against the College on Tuesday 28 June.
My thanks to Mike Smethurst for his help in organising and liaising with the OBA for arranging the fixture at the Home Ground and Rebecca and Efi from the OBA office for their time organising support for the game and arranging the catering and excellent BBQ after to send the players on their merry way.
The OBA X1 was captained by Adam Davies and his cohort was Chris Grammer, Ollie Gatting, Alistair Wilson, Hugh Richards, Ben Hansford, Tom Prideaux de Lacey, Jamie Thornely, Josh Hayward and Charles Davies.
Please contact the OBA office for details of the game against the College on Tuesday 28 June (KO 2pm)