What a beautiful way to start a new season. Although it was only mid-April, bright sunshine and warmth greeted the two teams as Coleshill opened their season with a friendly against one of the teams they will be facing later this season in the league. Stand in skipper Dave Peachey was looking to maintain his excellent record as captain and Coleshill fielded a strong side with a balance of youth and experience.

Many of the players were nonplussed at what to do following the toss as Coleshill were bowling first, an event which hasn’t happened in much of the past 4 or 5 seasons. Nonetheless, bowling it was and with a rookie ‘keeper in Mike Jones behind the stumps, the general impression was that byes would be vying for top score by the end of the innings. Opening the bowling from the Pavilion End was Haider leaving Mat Denham, beginning his 83rd season at Coleshill, rather unfairly running up the hill. These two started really well with Haider building up a nice head of steam and Mat giving nothing at all away (5 singles in 5 overs tells its own story here) Haider was first to get a breakthrough, clean bowling the opener who changed his bat because he wasn’t hitting it well enough…

After 10 overs, the first bowling changes were rung by Dave with the score at a miserly 11-1. This set the tone for an innings which never really got out of first gear and trundled along at 2 an over at best for much of the time. The first change bowlers of Phil Baker and Michael Walker offered a different challenge with Phil bowling a tight, straight line, challenging the stumps (indeed, most bowlers did this as 5 cleaned bowls shows) and Michael trying to spin the ball away from right handers from a leg stump line. Both of these bowlers were parsimonious and successful with Phil getting the opening bat to slice one to point and Michael Walker, channelling Shane Warne, bowling the number 3 batsman behind his legs with a beauty. After 20 overs, the score had moved on (slowly) to 42-3 and it was time for Hashim and Prabu to have their say. Regrettably, it was also time Paul Jones’s most telling contribution of the day. Prabu’s first ball was top edged to short fine where Paul stood underneath it for a simple catch. However, he apparently looked it the sun because instead of catching it, he squealed and ran away. Prabu was unimpressed, the rest of the team just fell about laughing, as did the opposition! Despite this, Prabu still finished with excellent figures of 2-6 from 5 and at the other end, Hashim’s excellent day ended with 3-12 from only 4 tight and high quality overs to allow others to have a bowl.

In a genius move, Dave then brought himself up to boost his figures and nipped the last two wickets out quickly to improve his average. One of these was caught behind by Mike who was more than tidy behind the stumps and was also unfairly denied a stumping which was clearly out when the umpire was unsighted. That would have been deserved reward for his excellent performance. Instead, he had to be happy with conceding only 2 byes all innings and looks to have played himself into the role permanently.

Aston Unity closed their innings after 35 overs on 81 all out.

Following a brief tea interval, the teams went back out with Atif and Ashgar opening for Coleshill. Neither of these two batsmen seemed much in the mood for running, casually hitting boundaries whenever they fancied including some pristine straight hitting from Atif and an extra cover drive that was reminiscent of Ian Bell at his finest from Ashgar. With 62 of their partnership coming in boundaries, the game was wrapped up in less than 10 overs, starting the season on an excellent note. The team spirit throughout was excellent, the sun shone throughout nobody went home not having had a game and there was even time for a T10 thrashabout after the game had finished. It would be unkind to mention Paul getting out for 2 (TWO) ducks in the same innings and lasting for only three balls so we won’t do that here.

It was also great to see so many of the 2s coming back to the club after the game to support the 1s as we build Coleshill back up to where it belongs. Here’s to a super season!