After a disappointing defeat to Newport Fugitives last week, we were keen to get back to winning ways with an away trip to Bridgend to face Vale Cricket Club.

John won the toss on a hard green top and elected to bat first.

With the prospect of rain and thundershowers at any point during the day, it was pot luck when it would appear, not if.

MetOffice, BBC Weather & Accu weather probably saw more traffic to their websites than that of the team trying to make an escape at 5:28pm from Vale CC….. more of that too come.

Andrew Trinder (7) & Matthew Tutton (4) opened the batting against a wisely Wales Over 50s bowler Darren Upham. It was tough going and Trinder eventually held out after hitting a few nice shots over extra cover. Tutton was soon to follow with a flare outside off stump to a back of a length ball.

Asif (23) batting at 3 played very sensible & waited for the bad ball, before accumulating 4 4’s. The pitch was proving very difficult to score at a decent rate, not the wicket we anticipated.

Holdaway (42) stayed around for most of the innings picking up singles & 2’s when we could, after the spin of Sheppard & Taylor were hitting excellent areas for the next 18 overs.

New signing “Harry” stay was brief (looking forward to seeing more of him with weeks to come). Maxwell came in to look to push the score along, and after a lovely extra cover drive for 4 to the 568 yard off side boundary, was looking to build a big partnership with Holdaway. However the umpire made a shocker of decision deemed Maxwell to Knick behind down leg side, but James 10000% middled his pad. (Only the keeper went up).

Anser joined Holdaway for a short amount of time until the drizzle came. The umpire concluded that the rain was too heavy and took both sets of players off the pitch.

For the next 2 and a half hours we had to listen to Jarrad Davies, Darren Upham and Co constantly moaning to the umpire and their players, about us going off early and that we should of played on. Unfortunately the umpire is there for a reason, and we stayed off with early Tea taken.

Rob Nash handled the situation very well, and with the scorers agreed that the game would be called off by 5:30, if a restart wasn’t possible by that time.

Another hour of Jarrad overly loud saying to his team, so we could hear “come on boys, they’ve scared to play us, there’s 20 points here for us”. “They’ve packed their kit away and are half way down the M4 already” 5:28 came along, 2 minutes to spare - the rain had stopped and Vale CC were in the field ready before the umpire had chance to put his hat on.

Anser & Holdaway came back out to bat from 123 off 39.1 overs. Holdaway run passed one & that bought Tyler to the crease.

Anser then showed his class and smashed the bowling around for the next 5 overs, playing some excellent shots. Through and over extra cover and a big 6 against the spin over long on.

We eventually got to 175 off our 45. But because the rain intervened- the target was reduce to 121 off 23 overs. The game was pretty much theirs to win.

Then entered Jaikshan Ramji!

Jarrad Davies came running out to bat, to knock the runs off in 10 overs as he said during the innings break. As per usual a chipped shot through mid off, just avoiding Berry standing their for the catch.

Ramji then started targeting the stumps with a bright orange ball, during the dull, muggy conditions at Vale.

Jaik then bowled Davies middle stump, after a horrible shot across the line. Then he trapped Hurley & Davies LBW bang in-front 3 wickets in quick succession. The next 3 wickets for Jaik were good catches from Tyler (x2) and a nice slip catch from Berry against Sheppard.

RWCC was back in the game after this incredible spell of bowling. Unfortunately for us Jaik could only bowl a maximum of 5 overs.

The dangerous Upham came to the crease not Darren, but his son Alex - after a good couple of knocks in the past weeks, we knew Alex’s was the critical wicket. Upham took spinner “Harry” for 3 4’s in an over. Before Berry pulled Harry from the attack.

Berry then came on with Tyler and bowled very sensibly, using the bigger areas of the ground to reduce the scoring rate.

Tutton took an excellent catch on the boundary. And then Ryall took the last catch of the game directly infront of a packed clubhouse. Ed giving it the fist to those who tried to put him off.

We had done it. We had won. Holdaway had basically put his kit in the car, Berry was organising his boarding passes for his trip to Benidorm, Maxwell was updating his availability to “not available” for the next 6 years and Ramji/Tutton was looking forward to their stag due next weekend. And that critical time of 5:28 came around! No one was looking forward to going back out.

But.

What a performance from Ramji with the ball & even better that Vale didn’t secure their easy 20 points. Davies and Co went home very disappointed.

We stayed for a couple of pints, whilst Vale stayed in the dressing room. Which was a shame. But, oh well, we’ll be seeing you back at our place later on in the season.

We go onto a tough game next week, as we host table toppers Whitchurch CC.