Sleep driving....Departure from York to Liverpool at 2am resulted in no sleep for the driving skipper and perhaps a few hours for the other travelling players. Luckily everyone made it to the airport on time, despite severely lacking some zzzzz.
A clever bit of swapping of cricket kit and some bulky hand luggage enabled us all to fall under the weight limit (take note London lot) and meant there were no extra weight charges for us, despite Rob Barnett’s bag initially weighing in at a whopping 22kg with Ryanair setting the limit at 15kg.
The flight went off without a glitch as the majority attempted some much-needed shut eye. We met with the four players travelling from London and had just enough time for a quick knock about outside Riga Airport before boarding our specially arranged minibus from Riga to Tallinn.
Borat the bus driver
Banter flowed as the new teammates bonded and we learned that beaver spotting and boulder counting were two popular pursuits in Estonia – honestly!! As the journey wore on we all could not help but feel our driver (Borat) did not really know where we were going. Especially as we got towards the end of our five-hour journey from Riga to Tallinn.Looking for our hostel seemed to be beyond our driver who had no satellite navigation and only a tourist map to locate where he was going. Eventually he resorted to picking up a buck-toothed local old man off the street to direct us to the Old Town and our accommodation for the next four nights.
A quick change around in the superb £8-a-night Hostel Alur, some cakes for energy from a local shop and we headed off (after getting lost….again) to the Tallinn Hippodrome for our first match.
Tour Match 1: Estonia Development XI v Carmel & District Cricket Club. Twenty20 match. Hippodrome ground, Tallinn (Carmel won toss)
The sight of the Estonian Development team warming up on the outfield dressed in their whites lifted the spirits of the entire team despite the prospect of impending rain. The match was to be played on a grass outfield with an artificial astroturf-style wicket on top of concrete.
Carmel won the toss and opted to field and the tour got off to a flyer as paceman Tom Horne gave the Estonian captain a short ball first up and he hooked the ball right down the throat of Justin Peacock at fine leg who took a fine catch. Diamond duck and Horne goes wild after capturing his first international wicket with his first delivery. 
Unfortunately for the right-armer he was to offer too many lose deliveries as Estonia’s second-wicket partnership between looked to take the game away from Carmel with a number of lusty blows.
Having seen Horne take 1/48 the skipper turned to Sam Philip in a effort to stem the flow of runs and the Cornish left-arm spinner did not let his captain down as he snaffled two quick wickets including Estonia’s big-hitting number three to finished with 2/24.
Australian duo Matt Somerford and Peacock worked in tandem and their tight medium pace bowling slowed down Estonia’s early impetus. Somerford finished with 2/8 and Peacock mopped up the tail to finish with an impressive 3/17.
A wicket apiece for leg-spinner Rob Barnett (1/4) and Tim Hill (1/9) saw the Estonians all out for 111 from their 20 overs.
Openers Tim Abraham and Andy Pierce gave Carmel a solid start to the innings but the day belonged to Perth left-hander Somerford who came in at number four to crack 65 runs.
The rest of the Carmel batting line-up were unable to make double figures as Roddy Brooks was run out in the final over with Carmel stranded on 110. Oh well, we’d have plenty of chances to make up for it on the rest of the tour.
Carmel lose by one run (Scorecard)
A few beers at the Hippodrome was followed by a swift turnaround at the hostel and out into the Tallinn night to share a few beers with the opposition, check out Nimeta bar.
As well as later visiting the holy grail of Hollywood club with a few “maxi burgers” thrown in for good measure - we hadn't eaten since Liverpool airport after all!
A great first day to start the tour.
2 comments:
I really love this blog post. It is quite informative and also rich in quality informational detail for all types of readers. I am a routine researcher and reader who reads different blog posts on a daily basis for the sake of knowledge. So as a part of readers' society, I want to pay my role in increasing the knowledge of other readers and researchers. I recently wrote a piece with the same quality of information on [pii_email_5a3f70ed21f415521fa3], you can also read it. This will surely increase the knowledge and the interest of readers who regularly visit your site.
Buy Sakhi Complete bridal jewellery Set gold jewellery set from buymyJewel more than 100 designs with authentic jewellery certificate
Post a Comment