Isle of Wight tour - the tour manager’s account

Local village side Brighstone were our first opposition on the IOW tour. The outfield was a little long but the setting was lovely and the weather sunny. The hosts batted first and made an assured start against some good bowling from John Murphy. But it was the introduction of Fred Price into the attack that made the first breakthrough. There were then wickets for Murphy, Alex Smith and Martyn Holman. Antigua tourist Colin Lammie was then on a hat trick with some loopy off spin after a smart stumping by Simon Cleobury. Brighstone ended on 148 for 6.

Price and Lammie set about knocking off the runs. Price was in particularly good form and ended on 79 not out. He was joined by Holman who smashed an entertaining 38 not out. So with only 8 men we managed to win by 9 wickets!

Sunday gave us the entirely different prospect of Ventnor, on their beautiful seaside bowl ground and £1.2m pavilion and cricket academy. The game was a 40 over contest with each bowler allowed a maximum of 8 overs. Ventnor batted first and made an assured start against Aussie left armer Chris Garcia and Martyn Holman. Both openers played very well and at the half way point the hosts were over 100 for no wicket. However, the introduction of left arm spinner Syed Karrar produced the first wicket through a good piece of work by keeper Simon Cleobury. Then John Murphy chipped in with a wicket during a tight spell and Alex Smith took two wickets with some funny variations. Simon Rawson came on to end the innings from one end and got a wicket when Cleobury took a smart catch standing up. Garcia came back and took 3 wickets at the death and Ventnor were restricted to 209 for 9.

In reply Cleobury and Fred Price opened up, but Price fell early after some accurate bowling had kept the scoring down. Then Paul Vedamuttu and Cleobury put on a good partnership until Vedamuttu was bowled by the spinner. Whilst Cleobury was riding his luck and reaching 50 at one end no-one could stay with him and wickets fell too regularly and the Jesters were behind the rate. Cleobury was finally out for 80 when the score was 118. Some lusty hitting by Rawson and Garcia got us close and for a while looked like pulling off a remarkable victory. Sadly it was not to be and the Jesters were bowled out for 187. But a good performance against strong opposition.