HALVERSTOWN 2: 143 for 7 off 20 overs
Batting: A. Pandey 67 M.Islam 20 M.Ruddock 19 Ahsan 9
Bowling: P.Rosa 4-0-14-3 A.Syed 4-0-21-2 S.Uddin 4-0-16-1
K.Hodson 4-0-21-0 A.Pandey 3-0-22-0 D.Drumm 1-0-14-0
ADAMSTOWN 7: 114 for 6 off 20 overs
Batting: Arun 36* Gyan 21 Balaji 19 Shankar 11
Bowling: Arun 4-0-25-2 Shankar 3-0-22-1 Elavarasan 4-0-24-1 Rajesh 3-0-29-1
Balaji 3-0-14-0 Pavan 3-0-25-0
The grounds at Harristown, in Brannockstown, looked so beautiful-freshly mown in the glorious sunshine-that the umpires appointed for this Adamstown Cup T20 semi-final said that the website had not even done it justice in calling it an “oasis”! Well done to Hubert for his great work. The game itself was tense as well as steamily hot, but towards the end of it, now against Adamstown following Kilkenny’s points deduction, it became clear that Halverstown’s opponents were going fall short. Adamstown lost by 29 runs, failing to beat the solid 143 run target set by the Kildare team. Winning the toss, I elected to bat. With just 8 runs on the board the first wicket fell as Mark Ronaldson was caught. It took a steady innings by Abhi Pandey to settle the nerves. Indeed he was close to exhaustion when run out towards the end of innings having scored a magnificent 67; so near to carrying his bat but his legs just couldn’t make that last run. Manik Islam’s 20 was a good support as was 17 from Matt Ruddock, recently returned to the fold from his time in Canada. Ahsan was run out with a useful 9 and Stuart Conroy’s 7 not out at the end was handy too.
Arun bowled well for Adamstown, taking 2 for 25 and also top scored with the bat with 36 not out. There was a wicket each for Shankar, Rajesh and Elavarasan. When Adamstown batted they found the bowling difficult early on and after 10 overs were 20 runs behind Halverstown. Arun pushed hard as did Gyan and Balaji but the tide turned with Paolo’s 3 wickets (and he felt he had a 4th!) .However, the key difference was probably Halverstown’s fielding, which was close to brilliant: nothing got past them, with Matt, Mark and Stuart Conroy particularly outstanding and Ahsan Syed and Abhi taking good catches. Cecil Johnston did well behind the stumps, also taking a catch. Ahsan took 2 wickets and Sahab Uddin bagged one whilst Kevin Hodson was a strong opening bowler who put them under pressure from the start. It was the complete team effort of which every player can feel proud.
Next Sunday, 25thJuly, at 4pm I will lead the team out against Terenure 4 in Corkagh Park in the Adamstown T20 Cup Final-the Club’s first Cup final appearance of any sort for two decades. Thanks to+ Stuart Hayes who was a busy 12th man on Saturday and Jon Kirby who helped out again by scoring Well done to everyone who has part of this amazing journey.
Written by Des Drumm.