Watsonian III rounded off the best weekend of the President’s life with a 94 run victory over Edinburgh Academicals II.

You can credit/blame Breachy for the headline.

With the club’s two top sides winning on the Saturday, President Brooks’ dream of all three sides winning on the same weekend was dependent on the thirds securing their second victory of the year.

Playing away to Edinburgh Academical II, the game was in doubt at 1pm with rain falling and clouds visible in every direction. However, after loitering for an hour or so, the captains optimistically made their way to the middle and Gaywood triumphed with his call of ‘heads’.

The game was reduced to 35 overs a side, and Burnett and Breach (or B&B as they’ll probably never be referred to again) set about their task with style and aplomb to get the Watsonians innings off to a great start. As the partnership neared 80, Burnett departed for 41 quickly followed by Breach for 31. Boorman and Harding kept the momentum going in the middle and with a bit of help from the middle order brought the score up to 162.

WCC took to the field in an optimistic mood and the sun even shone for a while. With tight bowling and even tighter fielding, Accies found it difficult to get their innings started – exemplified by U15 bowler Nimmo whose five overs included four maidens and went for just two runs. The skipper brought himself on to bowl and added to the good start, making the breakthrough with his third ball and breaking the off-bail in the process.

The incoming batsmen looked to up the run-rate but found no weak links in the field and only safe hands when they tried to go lift the ball. Gaywood added two more to his tally thanks to Boorman snaffling chances that went his way, another three times broke the opposition batsmen’s stumps and completed his career best figures with Little chasing and collecting a difficult overhead chance. At the other end Boorman’s accurate off spin was rewarded with two wickets and brought the innings to a close.

The high quality of fielding kept the pressure on the batsmen and invaluably helped the bowlers – catches were taken, all players contributed highly making it hard for Accies to score run, Burners invented the bellyflop stop (see MCC 2011 textbook for a step-by-step guide) and Harding and Little combined to run out the only batsman foolish enough to challenge a Watsonians fielder.

The win moves Watsonian III off the bottom of the table and hopefully gives the team the impetus to keep climbing.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 14th, 2010 at 5:35 pm and is filed under Third XI. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.