It was probably the finest April weather for a decade or more that heralded the start of a new cricket season at Moss Lane last Saturday with Wirral side Oxton the visitors, but unfortunately Edge’s performance did not match the sparkling weather.
The ground looked an absolute picture and the good weather even had the grass tennis courts open for play considerably earlier than expected, which led to a large gathering of players and spectators later in the afternoon to watch the end of proceedings in the cricket.
Alderley were missing their two opening bowlers, both on holiday, and Edge were perhaps victims of the unusual date for the start of a new cricket season – Easter Saturday. Having said that it was the same for both sides and Oxton certainly took advantage of Edge’s depleted attack with the home side further weakened by having their new overseas player, South-African Jason Roodt, having to be restricted to just one spell of bowling after injuring his back in the early part of the Oxton innings.
It was a very promising opening spell from 19-year old left-armer Roodt who recorded the impressive figures of 7 overs, 3 maidens and two wickets for just 8 runs.
Unfortunately, the rest of the Edge attack were not as impressive as the visitors racked up 244 for 8 off their 55 overs.
For Oxton, Simon Stokes was unlucky to be run out on 90, and skipper Lee Dixon scored a quick-fire 54. For Edge there was two wickets a-piece for Roodt, Tom Atkinson and Alan Day, but it was an imposing total facing Edge after tea on the fairly slow-paced Alderley wicket that was fairly typical of wickets at this time of year.
Edge never looked likely to challenge the Oxton total when they batted although they set out to build a steady total that would have yielded a draw and a reasonable points total out of the match.
Captain for the one match, Alan Day ground out a dogged 30 off 74 balls to give Edge a fighting chance but regular wickets were falling at the other end. Charlie Reid batting at number 5 played one of his best innings for Edge and was last man out for the hosts having made an impressive 65.
However, Edge were well beaten on the day and Oxton ran out winners by the impressive margin of 111 runs in a match that yielded Edge only 6 points.
This weekend Edge are away at Urmston and will hope to put in a much better performance but the season has only just started, and traditionally there are a lot of surprising results and inconsistent performances from Cheshire County Cricket Premier League clubs.
Final Result Cheshire Premier League
Oxton 244-8
Alderley Edge 133 all out
Oxton won by 111 runs
This is a member post from Mike Day.
