Academy Abu Dhabi Tour Blog 4

Matt Geffen's Update 4

The day started with our normal swimming pool session, today’s finished differently with the qualification rounds of the Abu Dhabi swimming Championship, a place in Sunday night’s final at stake, after we finish our regeneration session, final results to follow. Then onto our third game against the UAE team.

Positive thoughts filled our changing room, that a victory would be achieved, UAE won the toss and elected to bat first, Their innings took some time to get going, we picked up two early wickets and at 30 for 2 after 12 over’s, we were reasonably content. We then took our foot of the gas and allowed them to build what turned out to be a match winning century partnership, it was helped significantly again by us not controlling the swinging ball as well as we can, and at 150 for 2 with plenty of over’s left, it looked like we would be chasing 260 plus, we finally kicked back well to restrict them to 235 for 9 of their 50 over’s. But this was still a very useful score with the ball swinging like it has.

We started brightly and at 67 for 2 off 10 over’s we were still very confident of victory, then to further strikes changed the game 80 for 4 and we were in trouble, Adam Davies was still there going well, but from this point on we could never establish a match winning partnership, wickets fell consistently then finally we got a partnership going, Adam was joined by Rob Willway and they started to pull us back into the game, Just as the partnership was reaching its half century and us the control, Rob was dismissed, which made us 170 for 7, two further wickets were lost and last man Jack Parsons came to join Adam who had just completed his century, the scored crept up and we still had hope, then with 15 required Adam planted a short wide ball hard into the hands of backward point. We had lost by 15 runs. We were now unable to win the competition, but a huge lesson was learnt do not allow the momentum of a match to go against you, because once its gone you cant just grasp it back, we allowed this to happen and paid the price, Keith was not happy at all doing the Match de-brief, and expects better from us in that particular aspect, and will not accept it again, we’ve been warned.

Yesterday after all the tough cricket week we’ve had we have a day off, many are revising for exams early in the new year, some just chill out around the pool, we have a game of paintball booked at the hotel we stayed at in December, the Officers club has every possible facility you could want.

Teams were decided and Captain’s Davis and Filby gave there final war cry’s and the game was on, nobody won, but Rob “Rambo” Willway made quite an impact on the battle, the lads really enjoyed themselves.

Tomorrow we train and prepare for our final match v Yorkshire.