Evening Bears,

Well, that's a day that the Bears will want to forget in a hurry....

Despite Social Media reports that Spooner (or Spinner as Dropbear's phone autocorrected it to) had won the toss and elected to the field, the opposite was the case. The Harbies had called successfully and decided to bat first in the blustery conditions that greeted us all.

Things started off quite well with the ball as Drady and Rankin kept things tight early and just as it looked like one of the openers was going to take off, the Bears struck. Ads reacting to the skipper's call of 'this is your last over unless you get a wicket' by claiming the opening scalp. HP, having all the time in the world to clear that imaginative mind of his, holding onto a skier. Drady followed that up in the next over and 'Armfaced' their number 3 with an absolute ripper of a delivery and we had the Harbies at 2/27.

Drady continued to keep things tight and the Harbies only produced 6 scoring shots off his brilliant 8 over spell of 1/9. Some good support from Ads, DB & HP and at drinks, the Bears were in the contest with the score at 2/59. Unfortunately, drinks was our undoing...

After the break, the Harbies launched, punishing everything, in particular, the bowlers from the 'car park end' bore the brunt of the wind-assisted onslaught with the 10 overs from that end conceding 120, the other end marginally better with 'only' 78 runs being conceded. Our fielding didn't help as we put the same batter down at least 5 times. Admittedly, the wind and power of the shots played a role, but the law of averages suggests we should have held onto at least one!

Howie was the pick of the post-drinks bowlers and when their opening batter scampered a single off the last ball to join his teammate with a century, the Harbies had racked up 2/257 with an unbeaten 230 run partnership in just under 30 overs.

With the bat, it wasn't our finest performance. 5 Bears putting their hand up to pack the kit and it would have been 6 had they not put down a sitter from Spooner. Extras was our best contributor with 9 as we were bundled out for 39.

A big thanks to Buttsey for bringing the snags and bread and hanging around to watch us at the start, to Gribbsy for retrieving his gas bottle when the Bear gas died - this was a big sacrifice for him as it meant that he was demoted in the batting order below Spooner, to Radic for a fine performance with the gloves and lastly, to Drady, for a superb spell of bowling in what was a rather bleak day for the Bears.

Spooner.