Report by Daniel Mortlock:
Having handed Fladbury a humiliating defeat last year, they brought in reinforcements in the form of two Radfords: father Neal, good enough to play a few Tests (albeit only for England), and son Luke, only 13 but in the county squad and eventually to play a game for Leicestershire.
Fladbury batted first and began steadily against Morris Bartlett (0/25) and Daniel Mortlock (1/32), the wicket bringing Radford senior to the crease. He edged his first ball just short of slip, but having thus played himself in he showed the sort of contempt for our bowling that you'd expect from someone with 298 First Class innings under his belt. It wasn't so much the shot construction as the quickness of eye and sheer speed with which the ball came off his bat. Technically, he did give a chance, when he cut uppishly to Rob Harvey at point . . . but the only material result was the near destruction of Rob's thumb as the ball continued unimpeded to the boundary.
By this stage Radford junior had joined his father in the middle, and they made merry before Neal arbitrarily retired on 80-odd. That meant some respite for us but not, as it turns out for the Fladbury middle order, one of whom had the temerity to decline a call for a quick single, after which Junior stalked down the pitch and informed his senior partner "When I call, you run."
Michael Love (1/45) and Faruk Kara (1/47) did get a wicket each, and Rob miraculously took a catch with the bloodied wreck of his hand, but it really was just a case of waiting for Fladbury to declare, which they duly did on 224/4 after 39 fairly joyless overs.
Our target of 225 was nominal at best, but so much time had been wasted retrieving the ball from the neighbouring tennis courts and gardens that we only had about two hours to last, so maybe not much more than 30 overs . . . which soon seemed likely to be plenty as we succumbed to Radford's medium pace. This would have been perfectly respectable had it been Neal sending down his international-quality outswingers, but it turned out Luke was actually primarily a bowler, and soon had four for not much. Only Michael Love (13), Charles Acworth (12) and Morris Bartlett (10) made it into double digits, although it was Rob's digits that were the main focus. Having had his finger wrecked by Neal, Luke now set about inflicting similar damage on his foot, bowling him (for 1) with a yorker that, it subsequently turned out, broke his toe. As Rob limped back to the pavilion he could at least comfort himself that his humilation was at an end . . . until he was informed that it was a no ball. Still, it can't have been more than another thirty seconds before a second yorker had bowled him again - and yes, off the same toe.
Still, we'd managed to at least hold things up to the point that by the time our 8th wicket fell there were just four overs of the final 20 remaining. Faruk Kara was joined by Daniel Mortlock and they set about dead-batting the game out - although initially there was no need for any sort of batting, as Fladbury's opening bowler couldn't find his line, much to the annoyance of Neal, whose competitive juices were now engaged: "Come on, mehn, mek heem pleh!" Still, he didn't take the ball himself, instead showing what a big man he is by positioning himself at crazy mid-off, about a yard from the bat. With a lot of chat - sorry, chet - he tried to goad the batsman into an aggressive shot, but to no avail: Faruk (3*) and Daniel (0*) blocked out the over, preserving some measure of respect.