The Great Escape is on for the 2s. In order to have any chance to stay in Div 4, we needed to beat Addiscombe (tick) and now need to beat Thames Ditton and Bank of England in our last 2 games. The league table was a little confusing on Saturday morning with Bank of England in 7th playing Woking & Horsell in 8th - confusing in that we weren't really sure who we wanted to win. Eventually we found out that Bank of England won which puts them out of our reach, but leaves W&H just 23 points above us.

Addiscombe (10th) needed to beat us to have any chance of survival. Beat us they did not. The Christian Union House party wiped out the senior leadership of the 2s in its entirety, so the first question would be the choice of captain. Would it be Tom Peters, captain of the 1st XI for many years? Or James Grant, captain of the 2s for 12 years? Neither. Ben Turner in for his first game as captain, and that was absolutely the right decision.

It is a bit of a mystery that Addiscombe are 10th. We admittedly did not have a strong side but they pumped us brutally away, and have a good attack, led by the evergreen Barry Lineker (yes, really) and featuring several brisk, accurate seamers. For our part we knew that we had a long batting lineup but had doubts about our attack - much depended on the fitness of Tom Abbott.
Neither team really wanted to win the toss - we did and Ben chose to bat. Opening were Fergus Wishart on debut (Chemistry teacher at St. Paul's and captain of the SPS All Stars staff team) and Seb Mallet. The new ball was really, really tricky. Lots of bounce, sideways movement and Addiscombe were all over us. However, Fergus and Seb applied themselves and saw off the danger. Seb was out for 18 but had done an excellent job in seeing the shine off the ball and establishing a platform.

Fergus, rusty after a few weeks at summer camp, got into his work and unleashed some excellent shots all round the wicket as he built momentum and upped the rate. Pete looked solid as ever at 3 but fell to Lineker, frustration at Barry's immaculate nagging line and length resulting in a sweep and a reluctant finger raised by umpire Mallet.
Fergus then fell to possibly the worst ball he faced, caught at midwicket for an excellent 52 and we were wobbling a little at 84-3. Enter Peters, off the back of his 99 for the 3s the week before.
A lively cameo off 15 from Jacob Turp pushed the score on before he was caught, and Ben came in to join Podge. The two of them go on about how much they enjoy batting together like you wouldn't believe, but the bromance partnership of Podge and mini-Podge didn't last long this time as Ben misjudged a slower ball long hop and swished seconds before the ball hit the stumps. This could have been very problematic with the score at 130-5 but we did have more to come. We really need a partnership and we certainly got one, both Charlie and Tom batting very sensibly and dispatching the rare bad balls.

It was difficult to know what a par score was (I was asked this by Jack on whatsapp and said 185 I think) because the outfield was lusher than normal and the pitch not as roady as it can be. Boundaries were hard to come by as a result and so Tom had to run a lot of 2s. Smoking rollups does not help when it comes to running 2s, but boy did he stick at it. Charlie contributed a very important 23 before being caught at gully. By this stage we had got up to 180 or so with a few overs left, and Peters (64*) and Abbott pushed us up to an eventual total of 196 from our 50 overs.

We were pretty happy at halfway, having posted a score thanks to some excellent batting. Arthur JJ and Tabbott took the new ball and both bowled very well, beating the bat consistently and helped by some superb fielding, particularly from Fergus and Charlie in the ring. Tom got the breakthrough with the score on 22, their opener playing a good ball on to his stumps. As is often the case, bowling seam was hard work (both JJ and Tom bowled extremely well for little reward) and it was the introduction of spin that got the next victim. Howard and Grant are very different off spinners (proper action, wrist movement, flight and dip vs...'Chairman's off spin'?) but complemented each other very well. Charlie struck first thanks to an excellent catch behind by Jacob, who had let slip before the game that he's a keeper - news to the captain, who therefore didn't have to do it. Jacob was excellent behind the stumps actually, which was a key part of our win.

Grant snared the experienced #4 LBW, subsequent Hawkeye replays showing umpires call on the leg stump - he wasn't happy. #5 was caught off Charlie and then 3, who had played very well for his 30, fell LBW to an unintentional skidder-onner from Grant. No doubt on that one. Fergus came on to bowl some very good leg spin, landing the ball well and creating turn. He snared #7, again well caught behind the stumps by Jacob. JJ returned for an excellent 2nd spell and they couldn't really get near him. Very, very unlucky to end up wicketless and conceding 28 off 9 overs is excellent. Tom also returned well and was unlucky not to add to his 1 wicket.

The second part of the 5th bowler allocation was filled by the skipper himself - and very well too. A comical runout happened as they started to panic - #9 hit the ball straight to Grant at short cover. An underarm throw as slow as possible was probably not what Jacob wanted given it came straight out of the blazing sun, but ball was caught, bails off and no harm done luckily.
We were not yet safe - they had, somehow, kept up with the rate to an extent and at this level you never know whether the tailend are going to be rabbits or decent players. Whatever they were, they were dismissed. 3 wickets in the end for Ben, one caught behind, one bowled and the game ended with Addiscombe 19 runs short, #11 adjudged LBW. The beers tasted great after this crucial win.

Ben claims to have a very busy start to the working week hence not having time to write a match report. The cynic in me suspects that he actually wanted me to praise him publicly as well as in private - and I'm very happy to do that. It was a really excellent team performance which BT led very well. Now to beat that lot from up the road and keep the dream alive...