ONGAR 2: 229 FOR 7 off 40 overs
Batting: Chandu 106 Prasad 49 Rajkiran 37
Bowling: Arun 8-0-16-4 Adithya 5-3-3-2 Chandu 1-0-4-1 Rajkira 5-0-19-1
Sandesh 5-2-10-1 Ravi 6-0-23-0 Harsha 6-1-16-0
HALVERSTOWN 2: 104 FOR 9 off 40 overs
Batting: A.Syed 24 S.Conroy 22 M. Hodgson 14 S.Hayes 10*
Bowling: D.Drumm 6-0-27-2 B.McAllister 5-0-31-2 A.Syed 8-2-16-1
M.Hodgson 5-0-32-1 J.Khan 8-1-39-1 S.Hayes 4-0-27-0 A.Van Wyk 2-0-24-0
Our last game of the season was at home to Ongar, who are challenging to top the league. Winning the toss they batted first, but unlike the first game, we struck early through Matthew and Ahsan to leave them reeling at 7 for 2. But then came problems. The next wicket, Prasad for 49, fell at 120 runs, and an impressive 106 from Chandu saw them to 210 for 4 by the 37th over, with him hitting 6 sixes and 6 fours. We picked up 3 quick wickets after that but the damage was done: 229 was, we knew, beyond our capabilities. Both Brian and I took 2 wickets, one of mine a smart bit of stumping by Cecil, but a lot of the hard work was done by Ahsan and Matt in their strong opening spells. Ahsan’s figures were outstanding, particularly as he was bowling to their top scoring batsmen. Being the last game, and the writing being writ large on the wall by then, the bowling was spread around 9 players- only Jim Hodgson’s injury preventing all 10 of our fielders bowling!
I wrote of our previous game against Ongar, “then it was the same old story of our batting not making the grade, though to be fair their bowling was excellent and most teams would have struggled against it”. Nothing had changed. Ahsan batted well and scored fairly freely with a strike rate of 73%. Sean Conroy was close behind with a very good 22, but only Matthew and Stuart Hayes of the rest of the team got into double figures. Matthew, then Stuart and ,to a lesser extent, me took the score to over 100 in a small stand of late defiance- an attempt to replicate our previous meeting where we managed to bat out the 40 overs after an early collapse. We managed it, though Chandu spoiled my day with a fine caught-bowled to take my wicket on the very last ball of the day. Their bowling was again impressive with Arun the star, taking 4 wickets for the second time against us. Captain Adithya turned in a remarkable 5 overs, taking 2 for 3 and bowling 3 maidens. Sandesh was not far behind either, conceding just 10 off his 5.
It was not unexpected defeat but overall a bit disappointing given that we lost by twice as many runs as in our previous meeting, albeit their team looked even stronger than before.
Thanks to everyone who turned out for Halverstown 2 during the season. We have finished 7th of the 9 teams. We slipped up slightly in finishing behind Leinster 6, losing games to them and Castleknock that we might just have won on another day, but I don’t think we could have finished any higher than 6th given the strength of the teams above us.
We fulfilled all our fixtures, won a few games and had a lot of fun. Thanks for your support. Onward and upward next season!
Des Drumm 18/9/22