Sunday XI v Fleet Street Strollers - 4th May 2014

M & B kicked off their Sunday season at Bray with a 24 run defeat at the hands of Fleet Street Strollers(FST). After electing to bat FST lost a wicket in their first over as Arul Appavoo confused the opening batsman with his left arm round angle, as he shouldered arms and saw his middle and off stumps hit. Aggressive no.3 bat Davidson kept M &B on their toes as he was fluent through the off side and tried to pull/sweep anything straight. M & B opening bowlers though did a commendable job, especially Ambar Moorthy, who must have been operating from muscle memory, having not attended any early season nets. It was left to skipper, Matt Armstrong, commencing his twentieth consecutive season of Sunday captaincy, to get the next breakthrough. Having seen his first delivery, a friendly full toss despatched to the boundary, he trapped Davidson lbw, trying to sweep a straight delivery, with his next ball. Armstrong accounted for the next FST batsman as well, bowling him off his pads as he attempted to work the ball to leg. Armstrong finished with figures of 8/0/36/2 for his first Sunday trundle of the season. Although FST were operating at over 4 an over they prompted batsman Cocker to up the impetus and he didn't disappoint, sweeping his first ball faced for six. His quick fire 37 coupled with Brodbeck's well paced 58 saw FST take 80 from their last eight overs, to post a total of 219 for 6 of their 40 overs. In the end their total was about twenty more than Armstrong had hoped for, but a good target for his batsmen to chase nonetheless. New player, Brian Dixon, did well behind the stumps on his debut for the club.

In response M & B got off to a steady start putting on 29 for the first wicket before another new player, Richard Lawrence, was caught, in the ninth over. Once Dixon & Simon Ball had come and gone, each hitting a few boundaries, it once again became the Raoul Cheema show. Although early season the same modus operandi applied, play yourself in and then attack during the second half of the innings, keep out the good balls and dispatch the bad ones. As always Cheema was fluent on the drive, cut and pull and the forward defensive ! He did actually present the opposition with one chance, hitting a full toss to mid-on, who dropped the opportunity, from that moment on the FST bowlers were made to suffer. The longer Cheema batted the more fluent he became. In the end it became a game within a game, would Cheema reach his hundred or not, either within the forty overs or before he ran out of partners. In the Cheema reached his hundred with a couple of overs to spare , lofting the bowler over his head for six and then guiding the next ball through the vacant third man region to bring up yet another Sunday hundred. In the end Cheema carried his bat again for 116 no, which included 16 4's & 2 6's.Although Cheema upped the tempo in the second half of the innings M & B never really threatened the total, as no other batsman could give Cheema any worthwhile support - next highest score being 17 and Cheema contributing 65% of the runs, excluding extras !"