Handy win between showers leaves the 2's top of the table

Showers were forecast and showers we got. With rain in the air we won the toss and chose to bowl. The Flamstead openers started positively, cutting Ali Javed aggressively until Ali struck twice in the 7th over with a caught behind and a great catch from Shiva Subramanian at point (19/2). The Flamstead skipper Rob O'Dell stubbornly resisted the Village attack until Ajay Bhatia took his first wicket in the 12th over (23/3) and Shiva took an easy caught and bowled (32/4). Batting was difficult on the damp pitch and Flamstead crawled to 43 from 20 overs before Ajay struck twice, bowling Tom Smith and Zaf stumping Billy Senior (43/6). O'Dell continued to bat between the showers and Flamstead had reached 76 in the 33rd over when another shower interrupted play. Tea was taken and the 7th wicket fell immediately upon resumption of play with Murtuza Amin taking a catch at gully (76/7). The match had been shortened to 42 overs and O'Dell was finally out caught and bowled by Murtuza (82/8). Ajay completed his 5 wicket haul (5-11), taking the last two wickets in the final over, with catches from Lee Crocker and Dave Flavell, to end the innings on 101.

Turning straight round, the batting lineup was shuffled to finish the game as quickly as possible and Lee Crocker and Piers Jenkins set about chasing down the target. After a slow start, Lee accelerated with 10 taken from the 11th and 12th overs before being stumped for 33 (56/1). After yet another shower, the sun finally came out and the top end of the ground was steaming as it dried out. Murtuza then looked to accelerate a little prematurely and was bowled (62/2). Kudzai Makope was more circumspect, waiting for any bad ball to smash to the boundary but was unlucky to be well caught at slip (86/3). Piers (37*) and Zaf Basit (4*) then steered us to the target without further fuss.

This was a very useful win as several other games in Division 10A were rained off and only one other game was completed. Remarkably, with West Herts IIIs game being rained off and only Hitchin IIIs beating Ickleford, we are now top of the table, 10 points clear of Hitchin. We were fortunate that the Flamstead skipper was so keen to continue the game in contrast to most of his older teammates and it was tough on them that they only ended up with 3 points when they would have got 10 by abandoning the game. Furthermore it was only the presence of two large tarpaulin covers which made the game possible. Ajay Bhatia was the star of the bowling attack, ending with figures of 11.3 overs, 4 maidens, 5 for 11!

Flamstead II 3 points, Mill Hill Village IIs 30 points.