PUNCHING ABOVE MY WEIGHT

25/5/22
Eagle Members League Div-1
v LEE KERSHAW W 21-19 (Off 3-3)

Every match is a big challenge for me in the Eagle Members League. This week I faced Lee Kershaw who has his place in the upper sanctum of the club's best players.
I think I made the mistake of not genuinely daring to believe against top player Phil Bradshaw last week and as a result played nervously and didn't give him a decent enough game.
It was important to reset the mindset back to the opening league game against Andy Sexton - knowing full well it could be a tight game if I play well enough - but having that underlying raw belief that I could take the win.
A run was overdue so I shook off some cobwebs in advance of the match with a three miler in 21:07, not a bad time given the stark mileage of late which has barely hit double figures most weeks. It seemed to put me in the right frame of mind.
I lost the toss but won the first end and then built up a lead of five or six on my favourite patch until a minor lapse of concentration when I sent the jack too far in to the more trickier contours of the corner. My two woods weren't hurrendous, but just not tidy enough and Lee got in with the tightest of measures. "By a midge's dick", was the official conclusion.
Lee then kept hold of the block for a while with very good lead bowls, but crucially I was managing to get close enough to limit him to single scores.
I think the score remained quite tight from there onwards. I recall conceding two consecutive two's that were poorly contested from my point of view and I got a bit cross with myself. But despite all this, after landing a good winner down towards the front of the clubhouse, our scorer Arthur 'The Cap' Parker was there to tell us it's a cracking game to watch and it's 15-16 on his scorecard. There's nowt in it.
I win the next two ends to go 17-16 ahead and proceed to land two quite decent efforts back on my favourite mark. Inexplicably, Lee's second bowl was looking a touch narrow but glanced off his short first one before rolling up nearest the jack. Serious expletives were muttered to myself. Good luck and bad luck tends to even itself out though during a match.
All level then and it was a bit of an adrenaline pumped blur as I went behind again but somehow brought it back to 19-19.
I then sent us round peg to an area I'm familiar with and was a bit disgruntled at my lead bowl, slightly narrow and a little short. Lee then gets the road more accurately but goes past the target maybe eightteen inches. I get my land right second time, with a bit too much zip but knock in to Lee's bowl and I'm on. Lee's second goes off wide and when we approach, my less than great first one counted too and that's game. A really close match, but managed to get myself over the line when it could have gone either way.
I move up to fourth in the table and just a point behind third placed Lee. But it's still early days with some better players behind still to get in to winning ways. So far though, I'm punching above my weight and on current form a top six or seven finish wouldn't be such a deluded ambition.