SHARDLOW: Hungry to reach the final (From Wiltshire Times)

SHARDLOW: Hungry to reach the final

3:00pm Saturday 7th July 2012 in Sport News

IT was a very frustrating weekend for us.

I travelled up to Stoke relatively early on Saturday afternoon and there were a few heavy storms on the way up.

The team stayed over on the Saturday night and early on Sunday morning, we made our way 15 miles up the road to Leek.

It was just starting to spit and the neighbouring wicket to the one we were going to be playing on was completely saturated.

Luckily, we managed to speak to Staffordshire in the changing room and both sides agreed that they wanted to play a game of cricket and not have the match decided on a reduced-overs game, a bowl off or a toss of a coin.

It also meant that people didn’t have to take extra time off work on Monday to sit inside and watch the rain fall.

The scorers were keeping us updated on the score from Bournemouth and I usually get a lot of text messages through, especially from Dorset.

On our way back down, the final score came in and we knew that Cumberland will be waiting in the final.

We’ll be doing everything we can to get there.

Hopefully we’ll be able to claim some of the costs of the overnight stay back from the ECB but all we’re interested in is playing the game.

One positive from the weekend is that Corsham had a very good win down at Bridgwater on the Saturday and the lads who arrived to be part of the county side were in jubilant mood when they got to Stoke.

The county side are off on one of our longest trips to Cornwall this weekend for a three-day game and the players will all set straight off on their three-and-a-quarter hours journeys after their club games on Saturday.

We’re actually hanging in there in second in the table after two draws and if we were to get a win, we could actually be top at the halfway point, which would be fantastic.

We’re just hoping the weather lets us get on the pitch.