Bobby Swarbrigg reflects on another 'irritating' weekend for The Hills
This chiaro-scuro season continues on its irritating way, The Hills 1st XI would seem to be haunted by some sort of djinn or demon determined not to allow them to achieve victory over sides which should be accounted for without drama given the, all too often hidden, talent at the disposal of the workers in The Vineyard.
On Saturday we witnessed a meeting of the Milverton men and Merrion, it turned out to be a match which neither team deserved to win and concluded with The Hills presenting 20 points to their guests.
It all started so well with the two most miserly bowlers in Fingal, Naseer Shoukat and Joseph Clinton, once again showing the way for their team-mates. Having inserted the men from Bothar Mon The Hills opening bowlers set about strangling the threat by tight and accurate work, only Dom Joyce (88) and Rory Alwright (36) were willing or able to take them on and were it not for a proliferation of extras given away by some sloppy fielding and some friendly bowling in the middle part of the innings the visitors total would have been 40 or50 lower than the 219 they accumulated for 9 wickets in their time. Luke Clinton accounted for 3, Naseer and Mark Dwyer weighed in with 2 apiece. It seemed that the home team allowed themselves to be pressurised, not to say intimidated by the steady, cautious work of Joyce and felt that they needed to throw the kitchen sink at him in an attempt to stifle the perceived threat , it might have been a better course of action to settle earlier for isolating the former Ireland man and pick off his partners one by one, as eventually they did. It would be nice to think that that was more by design than accident.
So having been set a somewhat below par target The Hills set off in pursuit only to lose Mal Byrne for 3 in the third over. Mike Baumgart (42) joined Darrell Calder (40) and the future looked secure until the skipper went for a big hit and dropped it into the grateful hands of the only fielder on the boundary. Now the cookie began to crumble. Dark clouds were lowering to the south-east and as the skies darkened so too did the mood of the Fingallians, both inside and outside the rope. The spectres of Duckworth and Lewis were felt in the heavy air and their ectoplasm affected the batters as they fell, as much victims of their nerves as the bowling of Joyce and Watkins. The Hills men came up short by 3 runs on DL with a total of 166 for 6 and but for those demons would surely have been home and dry and sitting pretty.
Bobby Swarbrigg
