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A winning finale
OCs 256 for 9 (Johnson 63, Watkinson 38, Cope 29, Gates 24*, Henderson 22) beat Elstead 166 (Boxhall 30, Crump T 2-7, Williamson 2-16) by 90 runs
We finished our season with an emphatic 90-run win at Elstead, a new fixture and a pleasant way to complete a most successful summer. A record of 12 wins, two draws and the one defeat is probably the best in the club's118-year history.
A major jam on the A3 meant the bulk of our side were woefully late and so we were forced to bat and open up with the unlikely combination of Rick Johnson and Ed Henderson. Henderson raised eyebrows with some sweet shots, Johnson with the sheer awfulness of his innings.
Twenty-four hours earlier a journalist in the media centre at Lord's for the NatWest Series decider between England and India commented that Sourav Ganguly's desperate 15 had to be a leading candidate for the worst innings of the summer. Had he waited a day and traveled to Elstead he would have realised it could get worse.
Johnson played and missed, hit the ball in the air, swiped and heaved. At one stage his captain sent a note to the middle pleading with him to get out. He was at his happiest when milking fours off a 12-year-old, and in the end Henry Watkinson was forced to send out Alan Cope, fired by Johnson earlier in the week, to trigger him with an outrageous but popular leg-before decision.
Watkinson, Steve Bailey, Jock Vickers, Johnny Gates and Cope all chipped in with breezy twenties, Cope playing the shot of the day, an effortless punch off the back foot way over long-off. He holed out for 29, 25 runs short of what would have been the most runs in a calendar year.
Our score of 256 for 9 off 40 overs always looked too much and we opened with four slips and almost nobody saving the single. Wickets fell regularly, the Crump brothers generating pace and bounce, Gates bamboozling two men out. Johnson bowled a variety of deliveries, two ripping legbreaks, a few grenades and some filthy full tosses.
The end of a light-hearted session in the field came when Tristan Rosenfeldt, sporting a vicious hangover and an extraordinarily tight shirt, purchased the last wicket at great expense, largely as Elstead's Nos. 10 and 11 were anything but tailenders.
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