Porto Tour Report – September 2015

The season rounded off with a second visit to Porto; our first tour in 2013 was hugely enjoyable but apart from Saunders and Cannon, no good cricket was played at our end.
The idea was to take a rather stronger team than last year and focus on winning our last two games of the year. On Friday, slightly unfortunately, the party split into two camps, one keen to resample Porto’s culinary delights and the other equally determined to play their cricket under a thundering hangover. On the Saturday two Mohindrus, Haywood, Saunders, Dumont, Pascoe and Warlow headed up a batting order that also included Dan Williams, Charles Hale, Keith Hornby, Oliver Wise and the Club Captain. You would have thought…In the event only Dumont (47), Warlow (37), Pascoe (18*) and extras (28) made any impact on a total of 166, which was not really enough, but at least gave us a chance. We then dropped six reasonably difficult catches as Porto eased through with 5 down (and 4 retired). No complaints – had we held even one of the spilled chances the result could easily have been different. After the traditional dinner at the tennis and cricket club many of us spilled onto the streets and watched a highly entertaining police arrest of some alleged drug pushers that went on for about an hour. On Sunday it rained until just after we had to call the game off, a soggy and disappointing end to the season.
Many thanks to all who made the effort to come and thanks again to our kind and generous hosts.