Desch Mode

On another sunny(ish) morning up on the heath, the Roehampton 2nd XI assembled with the intention of turning last weeks win into the start of a winning streak, against a Whitely Village side who had lost their first 3 games but by all accounts were a better team than results on paper suggested.
RCC won the toss and made the straightforward decision of bowling first and set about their business from ball one. Impressive opening spells from the returning James Boxall (9 overs straight through, although you’d imagine he’d have been very happy had the maximum allowed been 8 overs) and the ever consistent Shahid meant we had Whiteley Village 3 down early on.
Improved ground fielding on the previous week raised the prospect of an improved catching display, that optimism was quickly quashed as the usual mixture of straightforward and less straightforward chances hit the turf. However, another consistent team bowling display ensured that the wickets were shared between all of the bowlers, with Zak and Shahid picking up 2 wickets apiece and James, Babar, Hugh and Yas picking up a wicket each. Whiteley closed on 134-8, largely thanks to 63 from their left handed (Surely batting left handed should not be allowed in 2s cricket!?! Enquiries to the league have been made!) number 6, aided in large part by being dropped on 0 and a couple of times later on. More on that later.
Still, chasing 135, should be a walk in the park… Right?

Josh and Hugh opened up with Hugh quickly departing, apparently with revision to get back to, soon followed by the usual 2s run machine Sacha for an uncharacteristic single figure score. That brought Henry Desch, on league debut, to the crease. Keen to make up for dropping their top scorer on 0, Henry set about knocking off the runs. Receiving some support at the other end from Josh, Mods, Rich and Babar, Henry took the 2s to within 8 runs of victory, passing his own 50 in the process, before missing that dangerous straight ball to leave the 2s 7 down and still with a handful of runs to score. With the 1s back from another victory and watching on from the sidelines, Zak Khan strode to the crease, as ever wanting to prove that at number 9 he was batting far too low (he isn’t) and preceded to ease all the nerves by smashing his 1st and 3rd ball for six to take the 2s over the line.

Man of the match in the bar afterwards went to Henry for his debut 63, however with some quick maths we realised that having dropped their top scorer on 0 who then went on to score his own 63, this resulted in Henry actually coming out of the match with a ‘net zero’ individual score. By that point though, it seemed churlish to rescind his MOM award, instead it was decided that we were better putting our efforts into celebrating back to back 40 point weekends across the 2 teams.

Result – RCC win by 3 wickets
MOM – Henry Desch