1s come up short

Words: Ron Basnet

Early Monday morning, I got surprised by a short one sentenced call from skipper Dharmesh saying I have to write match report for our last weekend's match. I denied it straight away but he said its the rule of Roehampton Cricket club and I have to do it, I was there thinking for a while why I never knew about this rule before in my 4 years of Roehampton Career. ?

I denied at first to do this or never came forward in past to write down any match reports cos I feel like I don't have enough range of words or proper vocabularies to make it interesting like our pros (Joe Prunell, Phil, Josh and others) does it. (Ha! - Ed.) Sometimes they make reports more interesting than the actual match ? so I decided to leave it to pros till now until I knew the new rule of Roehampton cricket club this morning.. so here we go

Right.

Saturday Afternoon, I don't know who won the toss (cos I am never told about it although I ask a lot to Dharmesh every weekend) but we were batting first. (Shockingly, Dharms won the toss. A review is underway - Ed.) We had a couple of changes in our team from our last weekend winning combination against Shepperton. HARRY FARLY was back and AQIB MEHMOOD was making his debut to 1st XI.
We had very solid team on paper, our top 4 batters (Phil, JP, Sticky and Harry)for this weekend were the best we could have asked for this season and then backed up by dependable Max and Momo and then strong tail of batsman/bowler/keeper who could bat whenever if they get any chance to show their ability.

As usual, Phil and JP started the innings, Phil had a rare struggle this season, but JP was fluent as usual, good on his shots even on tricky pitch. We were on good position at the end of 10th, (50 for none) and just when we thought we were increasing inning tempo, Phil got out and followed by Sticky (bowled), Max (lbw, although he would have reviewed it straightaway if we had any drs) and then JP after completing his regular quota of 50 or more runs for team in every match he plays. We were 53-0 and suddenly down to 75-4, then Harry and Momo started to repair the innings, slowly but watchfully. When Harry decided to increase his inning tempo, he got out trying to hit a full toss ball out of the park but straight at the mid on fielder. Then few small partnerships formed with tailenders on crease. Momo (21), Ron (12), Sheehan (6), Dharms (6) all got out trying to score quick to get a decent score on board but Toby played a wonderful late inning knock of 24 to get to us respectable but still under par score of 171.

Pitch was doing bit, not easy to score runs.. even highest strike rate pro like Mohsin struggled to score freely. Mohsin always complains about scorecard never showing the number of balls he played but I have decided not to give you any chance of complaining next week Mohsin, here you go, you scored (21 of 50 balls).

After quick tea, we came back to pitch to defend 172, we knew its under par but still defendable if we bowled well, (which obviously we didn't at the end). Mohsin (0-21) and Ron (2-25) started well with tight line and lengths and got couple of quick wickets too, oppo were 23-2 and the near end of first 10 overs, we thought we were very much in the game but couldn't maintain the same pressure to their lefty opener and no.4 bat.

They were decent bats but our erratic bowling didn't help us as well. Sheehan (1-28) managed to get a wicket of their no.4 bat on the only ball he managed to pitch it on 22 yards pitch in his 2 overs spell. JP (1-43) tried hard too, got their no.5 bat ( their no.5 batsman told me that ball turned a lot) then our young guns Aqib and Toby tried to hurry them up with their raw pace but their opener lefty was too good for us in this occasion. Aqib bowled really well although he figure shows different, half of his runs were edged, so its quite unfair to him on scorecard. Well bowled Aqib and Toby both. At the end We lost by 6 wickets.

So here we go, this is my first match report for Roehampton, hopefully don't have to do again in future. Thanks