Sidbury’s Crick guides visitors to victory – over Sidbury

Sidbury used their full playing squad over a busy weekend that saw two matches played and no fewer than twenty players see action.

On Friday a T20 game was played against Exeter side Sunset, an experienced group of players who pitched up a man short.

Given the good numbers Sibdury had on duty one home player switched ranks to allow an 11-a-side game to take place.

The visitors won the toss and chose to bat and made a flying start. At one point they were looking set to post a large total.

However, Sidbury began a fight back thanks to some tight bowling by John Miller, Matt Brewster and club captain Simon Rowe.

The latter seen so often behind the stumps, but on this occasion bowling some left arm spin and being rewarded with three wickets, and the Sunset innings close don 116.

The Sidbury reply began confidently with openers Mark Bishop and Matt Waters setting a solid platform from which Marcus Bennett took over and, with five overs remaining, the game was nicely poised.

At this point Sidbury’s benevolence back fired! The player they had sportingly provided for the visitors, Steve Crick, was introduced to the attack. Who earlier had offered Sunset the spare player, and would you believe. Clearly an uncomfortable moment for Cricket against his regular team mates, but Cricket, ever the cricketing trooper, immediately found that reliable nagging line he delivers with such consistency.

With the run rate increasing Simon Rowe found himself at the wicket faced with his team mate at the other end. Picking off a rare loose ball to the boundary the home win was in sight!

Back came Crick with a Yorker to lift the home skippers middle stump out of the ground and victory was Sunset’s by the narrowest of margins!

On Sunday Sidbury journeyed to Seaton and this game gave the cub the opportunity to give playing experience to a number of the younger players at the club.

On a baking hot afternoon Sidbury restricted the hosts to 160 with some fine catches behind the wicket by debutant Alex Stone.

Sidbury, in return, could not quite build sufficient partnerships to threaten the hosts.

However, Josh Reed top scored with 40 and the best of the supporting acts came from the in-form Barney Stone as Sidbury made an excellent fist of the reply, closing on three figures.