Melbourne Beaten By The Weather

Melbourne 60 for 10 (conceded)
The Retreat 55 for 2 after 8.1

On a dark gloomy night Melbourne were pegged back from the start by The Retreat bowlers and never seemed to find the consistency needed for the game. Nicholson was the top scorer on 15, but with Melbourne on 31 for 4 things were looking bad. Luckily for Melbourne Mikey Richardson managed 11 - including a 6 he claimed never to have seen in the bad light !!! , Beevers [14] managed to maintain some order and with new signing Sam Craven [10] they pushed the run rate up a bit before Beevers was run out. The lower order could not stop the rot and Melbourne were all dismissed for 60 off 13 overs. M Howden 3 for 7, D Hughes 3 for 13, J Hughes 2 for 18, A Moseley 2 for 21

In reply The Retreat were not going to let the dark skies stop them and quickly settled and got off to a flying start before the heavens opened and the players had to leave the pitch and take shelter. After a short while there was a break in the clouds and play resumed, Northfield [21]was dismissed in the 5th over to an excellent catch by Underwood off the bowling of Miller. Hepworth [17] fell 3 overs later to the bowling of Room but by now the score was 49 for 2. Hussain [12no] quickly got into his stride and it looked like the match would be over in minutes. With The Retreat only needing 6 runs to win the heavens opened once again and the umpires deemed it unsafe to continue. Melbourne sportingly conceded the game. J Room 1 for 16, R Miller 1 for 30
Many thanks to the Match Ball Sponsor - Michael Jackson