2025 MATCH REPORT 26/7: It’s come home!!!

Gerries versus Selly Oak at Coaver on 26 July 2025

Timed Game

Selly Oak 191-6, Gerries 192-6 Gerries won by 4 wickets

It was good to welcome back our friends from Selly Oak after the cancellation of last year’s fixture.

Selly Oak have held the match trophy since the pre-Covid days though on a couple of recent occasions we have had the upper hand only to be thwarted by adverse weather.

We were determined to win this year.The fixture is the only one of the season for us which has timed innings and a draw is possible. Therefore, on winning the toss and conscious of the fact that a draw would mean our opponents would retain the trophy, Captain Beano put Selly Oak in to bat reasoning that this would give up the best chance of winning.

Selly Oak started slowly and with Deadly and Kyson bowling tightly, runs were hard to come by. Moreover, Kyson took a couple of wickets, one courtesy of a catch behind the stumps by Mike Seal, and at the end of the sixth over Selly Oak were 18-2, At this stage our old adversaries, Bob Lyne and Lincoln Fensome came together and put on a stand of 48 before Lyne was bowled by Gordon.

Lincoln does not bother with scoring too many singles and rolling back the years was soon as usual depositing the ball into the trees and bushes beyond the boundaries on a regular basis. The disadvantage of this was that we spent quite a long time looking for balls which ate into Selly Oak’s batting time. You would not think that it would be too difficult to find a pink ball!! However, the Coaver undergrowth does not give up its cricketing treasures easily.

Nevertheless, the score raced along. Beano took a wicket courtesy of a catch from Gordon and Lincoln finally holed out to Deadly at long on (a really good catch) for 67 when the score was 138. The Selly Oak sixth wicket pair continued aggressively and at the end of their two hours batting our opponents had posted a competitive but not, in view of the fast outfield, unbeatable score of 191.

We had an hour plus 20 overs to reach our target and Beano opened with Jim Masters and Skins. We lost Skins cheaply, caught in the deep, but Jim was joined by James Evans and these two put together a rapid stand of 76 before James was out for 35. Jim was finally out for 42 and while all the following batsmen made useful contributions (Beano, a classy 28, JP 17 and Daniel 9), with ten overs to go we had reached 163-6 still 29 runs short of victory.

However Deadly (equipped with his new bat) joined Kyson and these two saw us home reaching the victory target without alarm and with 5 overs to spare and Kyson 27 not out, much to the relief of the waiting batsmen, Gordon, Phil and Mike. Victory to the Gerries by 4 wickets.

This was a really good game played in a fantastic spirit and capped off with magnanimous debut speech from winning skipper Beano as he gleefully accepted the trophy from Selly Oak captain, Chris Livingstone.

They have struggled to get players to make up a touring team in recent years but we really hope that they will be able to come again next year and continue our good-natured rivalry.