Bury lost to Bowdon 3-4

[<<] [>>] by Brian Medley at Bury
13 Jul (AC - Mary Rose)

Competition: Mary Rose
Club names: Bury Croquet Club, Bowdon Croquet Club
Match score: Bury 3 Bowdon 4
Date Played: 13th July 2024

Venue: Bury Croquet Club (Whitehead Park site)

Game scores (Bury names first)

Ged Smolskas (0) and Paul Kenworthy (1) lost to Brian Storey(0) and Brian Medley(0.5) 21-22
Ken Jones(2.5) beat Andrew Thomson (4) 21-13
Richard Forman(4) beat Michael Sandler(1.5) 26-8

Ged Smolskas lost to Brian Storey 1-26

Paul Kenworthy lost to Brian Medley 17-26

Ken Jones lost to Michael Sandler 10-26

Richard Forman beat Andrew Thomson 26-11

Report:

The rain - what there was of it - was not heavy. The lawns were, however, thought the players adjusted as the day progressed.

Bury looked set to go into lunch with a commanding 3-0 lead. Bowdon's Michael Sandler struggled with the lawn and his own form as Richard Forman's prowess around the hoops let him to the first finish of the day. The other two morning games went to time. Ken Jones (for Bury) rapidly got both his balls to penult, but made little further progress, however Andrew Thomson's attempts to catch up were foiled by the time limit. The doubles game had fluent breaks punctuated by unsatisfying intervals where the team with the innings (usually Bowdon) failed to do anything interesting with it. The game seemed in the bag for Bowdon with ten minutes left on the clock, when Brian Medley missed a five yarder with a finishing turn in prospect. This let Ged Smolskas establish a four ball break which he only needed to take to peg to virtually guarantee victory for Bury. However, he was terminally hampered after penult, allowing Brian Storey to peg his ball out to win for Bowdon.

After lunch, Brian Storey really found his form and rapidly dispatched Ged 26-1. Michael, too, had a much better afternoon and finished his game against Ken shortly afterwards. Meanwhile Richard continued his inexorable scoring from the morning against Andrew, to leave the match poised at 3 games each. At this point there was still an hour to play in the final game. Paul Kenworthy had taken the lead, taking his first ball to three back, before gifting Brian Medley the innings, which he promptly gifted back after comprehensively failing to do anything with the balls. Paul then took his forward ball to rover, but Brian hit the lift and went round, peeling and pegging out Paul's rover ball to give contact. Paul managed a couple more hoops with his remaining ball, but Brian picked up a three ball break from hoop 3, which he managed to take round to finish the game and decide the match.

Bury 3 Bowdon 4