Not the start we were looking for

The conditions for the first league game of the season were overcast, windy and cold. We lost the toss and were put into bat, as is usual in 50 over games. Unfortunately Zaf Basit was having an unguided tour of the local area, so Darshan Raval stepped in as an opener with Lee Crocker as usual. The young Hatfield opening bowlers were accurate and the outfield was slow, making scoring difficult. The openers were seen off, but the experienced change bowler Saim Rajput, who was bowling in Division 4 last season, made the breakthrough, bowling Lee for 22 (31-1, 13th over). He repeated this 6 overs later, bowling Zaf Basit (3) with an outswinging ball which looked like it was going down leg but swung to clip the top of off stump (37-2, 19th over). Anand Verma came in at 4 and played positively, pushing the score on supported by Darshan, who was unlucky to repeatedly find a fielder with some nice drives. The score progressed nicely until Anand was bowled for 36 (93-3, 33rd over), followed by Sanket Shah, LBW in the following over. Ali Javed dug in against the tight bowling and the score progressed to 123 until Darshan was caught (38) at cover, again followed by Ali (7), Ben Crocker (0) and Dave Flavell (0), leaving us on 124 for 8 with 4 overs to go. Pulkit Ohja was caught for 4 and youngsters Ibrahim Javed (8*) and Tommy Smith (5*) showed the preceding batsmen how to finish the innings, putting on 15 in the last 2 overs to take the score to 145 all out from the allotted 50 overs.

With Ali Javed only just recovered from a shoulder injury, the bowling attack was led by Darshan Raval and Tommy Smith. Both bowlers struggled with their length and the Hatfield score pushed along until Darshan bowled the Hatfield number 2 batsman Dunklin in the 7th over (28-1). The opposition captain continued the progress and bowling changes were made with Pulkit Ohja replacing Darshan who was continuing his tradition of pulling up injured in the first few games of the season with a slight stomach strain and Ali Javed replacing Tommy. Ali bowled a warmup over then got stuck into the opposition, trapping the extremely disgruntled captain Luke LBW for 17 (59-2, 14th over). Pulkit was causing the batsmen all sorts of trouble at the other end and bowled both Jeevan (5) and opener Wanniarachchi (32) and had McCann (8) caught at mid off by Flavell (79-5, 23rd over). Ali then had Simpson (4) caught at short cover by Pulkit, followed by Pulkit bowling Boland (0) and Hatfield were in trouble at 83-7. With the more experienced batsmen back in the pavilion, we felt fairly confident of bowling our way to victory, as we did on many occasions last season. Youngsters Scott Davies and Tom Whitton had other plans and batted very sensibly, pushing singles and punishing bad balls whilst surviving a fired up Ali. Sanket finally had Whitton (22) caught at cover by Tommy Smith (131-8) but the youngsters saw Hatfield home in the 36th over.

Hatfield had a very tight bowling attack, with 5 solid bowlers and only Lee (22) and Anand (36) managing to score freely, supported by the solid batting of Darshan (38). Another 20 runs might have been enough, with Ali Javed (2 for 36) and Pulkit Ohja (4 for 13) removing the Hatfield middle order cheaply, but the cool heads of the young Hatfield bowlers was enough to win the game.

Hatfield Hyde II 30 points, Mill Hill Village II 11 points.