Brook steamrollered by Champions

The 1's suffered their heaviest defeat for some time as Mid-Essex Champions Springfield proved too strong for Kurt Whisker's men at the M&B Club. Off the back of scoring 362 against Bentley last week, the visitors skipper Lee Brooks won the toss and wasted little time electing to bat and his powerful top order were soon in the ascendency on a true pitch.

Opening bowlers Israel Ochwo and Shaun Ross struggled to bowl a consistently threatening line and length and although Ross removed Prudence for 18, Latimer-Jones and Singh, both centurions the week before, threatened to take the game away from Goresbrook with some aggressive stroke play. Brook's spinners did retain some semblance of control however and when Latimir-Jones was run out for 51 and Shane Barwick had Singh caught for 53, the Dagenham side had an opening to potentially reign the visitors in to a manageable total.

Unfortunately that didn't happen, as Jim Symonds anchored the visitors innings with a fine 70 and with wickets in hand, Springfield's lower order was able to swing the bat in the latter overs enabling them to post 264-7.

The Goresbrook reply got off to the worst possible start, when after a wide first ball Andy Ovel bowled Brook skipper Whisker with his first legitimate delivery and although Toby Maund and Shane Barwick raced to 63-1 in the 8th over as they came out all guns blazing, once Maund went for a quickfire 32, the Brook middle order followed in quick succession as rather than set up a chase, they elected to play shots from the outset and perished to some good swing bowling from Marrion who picked up 4-50 in his 10 over stint.

A brief rally from Craig Irving who hit a run a ball 26 was the beginning of the end, as Brook subsided for 141 in the 25th over, the visitors only needing to take 9 wickets as Goresbrook lost keeper Chris Burke in the field, for the season as well as the second innings, as he ruptured his achilles tendon diving for a catch.

Skipper Whisker was honest in his appraisal of his side after the defeat and admitted that his men have work to do to compete at this level,

"We've spoken for the last 2 or 3 years about wanting to play better cricket and I suppose you should be careful what you wish for, as Springfield are an excellent side and they completely outplayed us today.

It's been a while, probably the first season that we won the Lords league in 2011, since we have been playing tough games week in week out and I think the first 5 games have shown that we need to raise the bar everywhere if we're going to be a top half side in this Division.

Everybody has a part to play in that and I'd like to think that by the time we play Springfield again in 9 weeks time, we'll be a better side for this experience."

*addendum - it's been brought to my attention (ok I read it in the Springfield match report) that after Burkey's injury the away skipper fielded until we could mobilise Lee Grainger for duty. Whilst this is no more than I would have expected from a Dinnington lad, the gesture was much appreciated (and mentioned in Kurt's umpires report) and the omission from the original report was entirely due to the person writing it being at a wedding in leafy South West London on Saturday rather than appealing for caught behinds off items of clothing in Dagenham.