{"id":587,"date":"2010-05-14T21:44:28","date_gmt":"2010-05-14T21:44:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/?p=587"},"modified":"2010-05-14T21:44:28","modified_gmt":"2010-05-14T21:44:28","slug":"cricket-and-wine-on-a-friday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/uncategorized\/cricket-and-wine-on-a-friday","title":{"rendered":"Cricket and wine on a Friday"},"content":{"rendered":"

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On the way back from cricket. Several times a year I take a day off and spend it playing. Play is important for adults, just as it is for children. So I love playing cricket for the wine trade team. Today was the first fixture of the season, versus the Gents of Essex, at Coggeshall Town Cricket Club.<\/p>\n

Nick Oakley, who is the captain for this fixture, had assembled a good side, with many familiar faces \u2013 regulars who play this game most years. The pitch at Coggeshall is a batsman’s paradise \u2013 very true, consistent, and a graveyard for medium-paced bowlers. The unofficial term is a ‘road’.<\/p>\n

As is usual, we put the opposition in first. Our ringer, who is dating one of Nick’s three daughters, was a 20 year old all-rounder, and he opened the bowling (and later the batting). Quick and lively, he caused a few problems, as did Nick from the other end. But after four overs all the shine was abraded off the ball by the tarmac-like pitch, and from then on in the opposition scored at a lively lick.<\/p>\n

All the bowlers ended up with a solitary wicket, with the exception of Nick whose second spell of ‘spinners’ yielded three, including the flukiest of wickets with the first ball after lunch. We all conceded quite a few runs though (the ball didn’t swing a centimetre), and they declared eight down for 278. Despite this, it was a solid performance in the field. No one did terribly much wrong \u2013 they just batted very well.<\/p>\n

Our reply started well with a 50 opening stand, before wickets started falling fairly steadily. Batsmen got in, got settled, and then got out. But there was cause for hope: we had strength in depth with Sayers at 8, Truttwein at 9, and Oakley at 10. At least we could bat out a draw? Not so, alas. I came in at number 11 and they’d just brought back their opening bowler and an elite Aussie off-spinner, looking for a quick finish. I felt very comfortable against the quick bowler \u2013 this was a lovely, true pitch, and I played out a couple of overs.<\/p>\n

But the spinner was pretty good, and in the second over I faced from him he got one to come back off a decent length through the gap. A shame \u2013 we had just six more overs left to survive, and it would have been nice to get a draw. In the end, we were short by 90-odd runs.<\/p>\n

Lunch wines? Very nice Louis Bovard Medinette 2007 \u00a0from Switzerland – a minerally, crisp but full flavoured white. Quoin Rock Syrah 2005 from Stellenbosch was also nice – lovely minerally, spicy red with some earthy notes. Then Howard’s two wines: a deliciously fresh, pure Frappato from Sicily and a very interesting, minerally Roero Arneis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the way back from cricket. Several times a year I take a day off and spend it playing. Play is important for adults, just as it is for children….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[100],"class_list":["post-587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cricket"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":589,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587\/revisions\/589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}