Skittled again

The last of the 50 over games was against West Herts IIIs at Queens School Bushey, the scene of Sanket Shah's heroic performance with bat and ball last season. The toss was lost as usual and we were put in to bat. Zaf Basit and Lee Crocker made decent progress against the probing attack of Balaji Chandrababu and Lawrence Dingre until Dingre bowled Crocker (13) in the 8th over (21/1). Hasham Cheema (2) was then caught at cover off Rajan Gurung (32/2). Pete Jaffe (0) followed immediately afterwards, caught off a loose first ball at cover (36/3). The pitch was producing uneven bounce which Dingre used to great effect and got the wicket of Murtuza Amin (11), who had counter attacked briefly before unluckily gloving a ball which reared up off a length onto his stumps (48/4). Zaf Basit was also unlucky to get bowled off another short ball which kept low. David Flavell (4) was out LBW playing across the line, Lee Cara (7) slogged briefly, Dave Knight (0) was bowled first ball, Tommy Smith (0) became the third golden duck of the innings, caught at silly mid off from a decent short ball. Ali Javed (2) was the last wicket to fall to end the innings on 68 all out in the 25th over, with Andrew Godfrey undefeated on 4 not out.

We turned around straight away and the opening bowling pair of of Ali Javed and Lee Cara immediately looked dangerous and difficult to score against. Ali Javed struck first, removing Balaji Chandrababu with a sharp catch at mid on by Lee Crocker (9/1), followed in the next over by captain Amyn Haider (3) who looked baffled to be bowled by a ball which moved miles by Lee Cara (12/2). Lee struck again to remove wicket keeper Ryan Smart, caught at gully by Murtuza Amin (20/3). A solid partnership then followed until opener Anwar Haq (21) was caught at deep mid on by David Flavell off Andrew Godfrey (43/4), having been previously dropped by Murtuza. Nitendra Sharma then tucked into the bowling in an effort to finish the game off and nearly succeeded until he was well caught at cow corner by Lee Cara for 15 off Murtuza's bowling (63/5). No further wickets fell and Lee finished the game off with 5 wides!

We needed some Sanket-style heroics again this year. We were missing all our most stubborn batsmen and it showed. To go from 36 for 2 to 68 all out takes some doing, but we don't often have 3 golden ducks in one innings. The West Herts bowlers clearly knew how to bowl on their own pitch and made good use of the variable bounce. The fact that West Herts were 5 wickets down reaching our meagre total suggests that we might have won with a total of 100 on the board.

West Herts IIIs 30 points, Mill Hill Village IIs 5 points