Overconfident Shipwrecks Miss The Boat

A full roll call of Shipwrecks managed to lose against eight man Lockerbie outfit at Kingholm 2 on Thursday, mistakenly thinking that fair winds would blow them to victory without undue effort on their part and going down by a paltry three runs.

Lockerbie won what proved to be a crucial toss and elected to bat, thereby avoiding the gloomy conditions that made the flagrant pink ball hard to spot on the radar later on.

Opening spells from nippy Chris Lumb and Skipper Alastair McEwan were reasonable enough but wickets were slow to fall. A long, wet outfield made the boundary hard to find, but Shipwrecks compensated by sitting deep, allowing easy singles and not covering obvious gaps, and the Lockerbie batsmen grew accustomed to the unvarying attack.

Although Mike Lumb delivered five accurate overs replacing McEwan at the Pavilion End, there was no-one to come back at the far end once Colin Taylor lost his length, and Davey Fallas was left to deliver two overs for 14 at the death as Andy Veitch worked the shorter legside boundary late on.

Perhaps underestimating the difficulty of reaching Lockerbie's 85 on a slow outfield, Shipwrecks relegated key batsmen down the order and struggled to make progress after the opening few overs. Sid Oates was again run out after a bright start - this time by a combination of ineffective calling and a sharp throw from young Daniel Veitch at point. A match changing moment then occurred as Geoff Dean was cut apart by a freakish delivery from Gracie that moved in unpredictably from well outside off stump to bowl him off his pads.

Chris Lumb made considerable amends, forcing the ball square and straight and twice finding the boundary before retiring on 25. But Mike Service was bowled early and, when Jim Worthington was caught for 10 of in the fifteenth over, Mike Lumb and Alex Taylor still needed 35 off the last five with pacy Liam Rogerson

The man most likely to...

yet to return to the attack.

What followed was a creditable effort, but Lockerbie skipper Veitch craftily thwarted Shipwrecks' need for big boundaries by double manning the wide long on area off his own bowling.  Shipwrecks fell short by just three runs. Meanwhile the man most likely to hoist a couple of big ones amidships (Davey Fallas) spectated from the boundary.

As with the Spanish Armada better commitment and guile had triumphed against superior force and numbers and the defeated could only drift back to the Ship Inn to discuss what might have been.

Scores: Lockerbie 85 - 3 : Shipwrecks 82 - 4 (C. Lumb 25 n.o., A Taylor 18 n.o., M. Lumb 13 n.o.)