Luke Haughton tons up but 2s can't finish the job

Rahul Dravid was quoted to say, “you don’t win or lose the games because of the 11 you select, you win or lose with what those 11 do on the field”, and Saturday, for me, was one of that that completely disagreed with this quote.

The game started with skipper Ali Raja being 45 minutes late, forgetting the scorebook and the match balls. Most people would have been dropped for such behaviours, but as it was Ali’s first game for the club this season, so he was easily forgiven. After winning the toss and electing to bat, a youth policy was employed allowing Saker and King to open. Unfortunately King was out early for 3, which was extremely unrepresentative given the hard work he has put into training and pre season this year, and this brought Tree Haughton to the crease. This saw one of the best knocks seen at llama land where Luke had to reign in his bubbly and effervescent personality, to dig in on what was surprisingly a poor wicket given the groundsmans hard work on it during the week. Three cheap wickets fell due to soft dismissals, although to be fair to Henry Tye his mind was elsewhere after he was named as 12th man in the RPCC “thick” eleven. Tiley came in and provided suitable support for Haughton, who battled on to score a superb century greeted with a enormous appreciation from his teammates, apart from his brother Rory. An above par score of 180 left us 45 overs to try and bowl Weybridge out.

After being wound up during the break, which rarely happens, Daryl king bowled beautifully with the new ball snaring two quick wickets. The brightest and nicest man in the side, Mobeen supported this good start abley with Wilbur Tiley, who also settled into a great line and length. The fielding also provided support, with Irving who has had a 3 month exile from taking catches, returned to the scene making the very most of a dolly at cover celebrating like as much as a post inferno night out. Weybridge were reduced for 100-8 as the draw looked inevitable until that man Tree Haughton came back on to bowl. Their batsman then decided to sledge Simon King, whilst batting, giving the llamas extra energy to not only chirp the batsman out but also let him know where to go when Haughton bowled him very next ball. Unfortunately Weybridge hung on, as we allowed them to have 11 wickets instead of 10 due to Tiley bowling too many overs, leaving a winning draw as the result. As Dravid’s quote said at the start of this piece, whatever the 11 selected, if it can provide excellent performances (Irving’s catch), outstanding leadership (Raja), selflessness (Tree Haughton) and if worse comes to worse, two blokes who are happy to have a scrap at the end of the game (I’ll let you guess who), then you will be able to get a winning draw against Weybridge.