Without giving too much away to our future opponents, there is an absolute clarity to the 1s match strategy this season – bat first, score as many runs as fast as possible, then get Vijay and Bhupi to open the bowling, go for 3 an over meaning the oppo are too far behind the rate at drinks to stand a chance. Yesterday – it worked, perfectly.
An opening partnership of 30 (off 2 and half overs) may have been the key to this victory. Keeran, once more, in his considered opinion, unjustly given LBW, was responsible for just over 3% of that partnership. That, sadly for Bromley Common, brought Rikin to the crease to join Irv. Punishing the bad balls brutally, especially using the short boundary (Rikin in particular really muscled a few maximums into the woods that on another ground may have been dropped catches), these two took us to 72, with Irv perishing to a sweep in the 8th over for 41 off 25 balls. Abhishek joined Rikin in a partnership that could easily be described as beauty and the beast. We’ve all fallen head over heels for Abhishek’s stylish batting, whilst Rikin was the happy to admit that the first half of his innings could only be described as grotesquely ugly. However, these two brought up the OEs’ 100 in the twelfth over and had moved us on to 149 in the 19th when Rikin fell for a meaty 75. In a clear statement of intent from the skipper, Josh was sent in next and in his own, inimitable style, crashed a brutal 47 runs, overcoming the disappointment of watching Abhishek, out of character, miss a horrible swipe at a straight full toss to go for a run a ball 42. For pure entertainment, who wouldn’t want to see George and Josh bat together and, with a level of intent that was off the scale, these two moved the score onto 233 in the 30th over before Josh tried to play a delicate chip shot, praised off the bat by Vijay who hadn’t spotted that it was looping straight into square leg’s grateful hands. Louis, suffering from pad rash, came and went quickly, then Reyhan (best looking number 8 in the league) headed out to the middle. He and George added 24 before George gave the oppo more catching practice, then Reyhan left Hammer after chipping another one to grateful fielder. Vijay and Hammer worked the ball around well, before Vijay, in the afterglow of a fantastic six, offered up yet another catch. Bhupi struck his weekly boundary before missing another straight full toss – clearly a danger delivery for our batters this week, and our innings closed, after 37.5 overs on a fairly intimidating 291.
Having enjoyed another good tea, which helped a few of our team soak up some of the liquid refreshment they had imbibed in the latter stages of our innings, we started a gentle fielding warm up which was unremarkable with the exception of Josh, backpeddling furiously to take a catch, unaware of the sightscreen behind him. Moments later, Josh had disappeared THOROUGH the sightscreen and could be found lying, immobile, in a heap on the other side of the screen, at the foot of a hedge. He survived and we implemented the second part of the Irvball gameplan. Once more, our opening misers, Vijay and Bhupi intensified already prevalent scoreboard pressure, with Vijay’s 5 overs going for 13 and Bhupi’s 9 overs costing only 26. Admittedly, Bromley Common’s openers had laid a firm foundation, putting on 85 off the first 22 overs, but this left the rest of the batsmen needing to go at over 10 an over – a challenge too far, even for their number 3, Harrison Johns (yes, son of our very own Nick). By this stage, our wicketkeeper had been through several ups and downs, from an amazing first 5 overs of excellence and great chat, through being no-balled for taking the ball in front of the stumps, back up through what he himself described as Louis’ amazing spell of heat (perhaps the 19th fastest bowler in Division 9) through the crashing aftermath of several earlier beverages, to end up simply collapsing backwards when taking a ball from Abhishek. The rest of the bowlers performed a mixture of keeping it tight, bowling as many variations as possible at the co-chairman’s request, bowling front foot no balls off a two pace run up and demonstrating that there is nothing at which Abhishek fails to excel on a cricket pitch. His four overs cost just 12 runs, included a wicket and also one over timed at just 80 seconds – perfect! George kept challenging the batsmen in his spell of 8 overs 1 for 39, Irv’s cobraball didn’t take a wicket but did entertain (he bowled 7 overs for 38), Reyhan’s spin generated an under-impressive 2 overs for 33, whilst Rikin’s over of leg spin cost just 8 runs. Our third and final wicket came in Hammer’s over (the 40th) with a trademark dismissal of a batter confused by flight scooping a catch to George.
A fantastic afternoon, nearly 500 runs scored on a pitch variously described as a road and a minefield (you can be the judge of that) and OE’s back to winning ways with another 20 points secured.
MOM – Abhishek
DOD – Keeran
Breakthrough moment – Josh
Hammer Supersupporter – Rory’s mum (narrowly beating Mr and Mrs Johns and Richard Saunders)
Positive race relations – Josh
Nicola Fuller safeguarding award – Vijay
OBL - Reyhan