Tipton’s first encounter with Bakers from Exeter ended in an exciting finish.
Tipton elected to bat first but could not cope with the accurate bowling of Matt Bassett, who took the first four wickets, all bowled. He removed Tom Birch, David Thayre, Alex Tubbs and Roger Hunt, who all failed to score leaving Tipton on 2-4 wickets. Phil Tolley was unable to find anyone to stay with him as he lost two more partners with the score on 21.
That score, of 21-6, left the home faithful thinking of the possibility of witnessing an all-time Tipton low score!
However, Mark Channon stayed long enough for the score to pass 50 and, remarkably, Tolley reached his 50 out of 65.
Phil Wright in his 700th Tipton appearance managed to stay with him, but an achillies injury attempting to get off strike left him hobbling, but he bravely battled on to stick around, albeit with a runner.
Tolley was eventually caught with the score on 92 having made 72 of these himself! Mark Bassett took 5-7 off his eight overs – and quite some statistic is that all five were clean bowled as Tipton ended 97-9 with six ducks and the second highest scorer was Al Matthews with five!
At least the tea was reached at a reasonable time and earlier thoughts of a beer match being necessary were unfounded.
In a mirror of Tipton’s innings, Bakers started badly and slumped to 8-3 then 27-5 with David Birch with three wickets and Mark Channon, taking two, doing the damage. However, captain Andy Bassett held the innings together as they slowly closed in on Tipton’s small total. Three wickets for 9 runs gave Tipton hope as David O’Higgins and Alex Tubbs took two wickets each.
Bassett nearly took them to victory but he was caught with just two runs needed. An exciting end saw Bakers win with just one wicket to spare.
This was most certainly one of those ‘strange games’ of cricket in which neither team was able to score more than 100, yet there were two half centuries along with no fewer than nine ducks!
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