Stanhope vs. East Rainton - 25th April 2009

With 14:00 hrs rapidly approaching and the wicket looking resplendent in freshly mown green, all was set for an afternoon of grass-roots cricket, as the first game of the season, sponsored by Graeme Simpson looked set to start on time. Some of the more long-in-the-tooth seasoned players, and spectators, were waiting for the weather to break – as forecasted. However apart from a brief stoppage of 15 minutes all that remained was a distant thunder storm to occupy the amateur weather forecasters.

Stanhope won the toss and elected to field first, and all was set for play. East Rainton has an impressive record in the NEDL with a god number of Championships to their name since the turn of the Millennium. It was always going to be hard, but just how hard was soon to become evident.

Stanhope opening bowling of A. Robinson and R. Pringle rapidly contained the visitors, with Pringle claiming 4 of the eventual 7 wickets claimed by Stanhope. At one point early in the game he was set for a hattrick, and the expectant crowd were ready to applaud loudly. But a simple defensive stroke put paid to any early in the season upsets. It has to be pointed out that Pringle was bowling from the railway line end and when C. Henderson from East Rainton took guard, play was stopped with the following request. “Could we wait until the tractor in the distant field had moved out of my field of view!” closely followed a minute later by, “could anyone also get those sheep out the way.” This was met with a delivery from Pringle caching an edge to send the ball through to F. Stephenson who took a fine catch confirming his nickname of Gloves. The previous ball had seen Stephenson removing the bails of G. Steele for a fine stumping. Gloves just wasn’t the same after these two successive dismissals, his confidence behind the stumps manifested itself into some fine catches and some assertive play as wicket-keeper. Don’t worry Frank we won’t mentioned the dropped catch later in the East Rainton Innings, that potentially cost the team a bonus point!!.

Pringles figures ended up as 4 wickets at a cost of 55 runs. Supporting from the River Wear end was A. Robinson who was possibly trying just a bit too hard. Robinson always gives 110% but his effort was not met with any success this time, his figures of 0 wickets for 45 runs tells its own story. Between them these two did contain the visitors but the game turned following a period of heavy rain which upset the rhythm these two had generated. As these two bowlers entered the latter stages of their allotted overs fitness became an issue, both were feeling the effects of their efforts physically and also perhaps mentally. The East Rainton players of N. Matthews and M. Lowther started to open their shoulders having got their eye in and picked the deliveries to score heavily and rapidly.

The second line bowlers struggled to make an impact, only R. Young was able to make any inroads with the wickets of M. Lowther and G. Portray. However Stanhope simply did not have the answer to some strong middle order batting of East Rainton. Credit must be made to A. Kitching a young Stanhope player who was able to stand up to some strong batting with predictable determination.

You may notice that a dismissal is unaccounted for, well G Portray was given out for obstructing play as R. Pringle called for a catch and Portrays’ runner collided with Pringle.

At tea East Rainton were 202 runs for 7 wickets, a tough target for the home team to chase, but confidence was high and from experience all our batsmen have the ability to score runs, but today they all needed to do it not just one or two of them.

Well it didn’t take long for the first wicket to fall, as E. “Rock” Rowell was dismissed for 0, and S. Muse walked out to face alongside R. Young. Both of these in the past have played well together last season and till hopes were high. It wasn’t to last, S. Muse made a quick 10 runs before being caught by I. Kitching attempting to continue to keep scoring runs.

From this moment on the game followed a rather predictable pattern. Batsmen were being out bowled at regular intervals, with 6 being bowled or given out LBW. To put it simply Stanhope were given a wake-up call as to what to expect in the First Division and it wasn’t a pretty site. All out for 45 runs meant that they only managed to claim 3 bonus points putting them at the bottom of the league table. At stumps the Graeme Simpson Match was won by East Rainton by an impressive 156 runs.

However it is only one game into the season and there is time enough to bounce back and put on a true display of their collective ability. The batsmen need to take time to read the bowling and the wicket before starting to attempt to hit out for runs. As for the bowling, they need to concentrate on line and length and hold onto self belief.

We all knew that the First Division was going to be hard and yesterday was a good demonstration as to just how hard. Weardale people are well known for dogged determination and the team will need to dig deep for the next hard fought game.
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