HALVERSTOWN 2: 121 FOR 6 off 40 overs
Batting: K Hodson 37 D Foster 16* M Hodgson 9*
Bowling: Kartheek 2/19 Pranayama 2/21 Sandeep 1/14 Vijay 1/19
ONGAR 3: 54 all out off 27.1 overs
Batting: Ravindra 11
Bowling: D Foster 3/15 M Hodgson 2/6 Arun B 2/7 K Hodson 1/7 A Syed /15
Our opening match of the season had been a defeat by Swords and I was keen to get an early season win under our belts. Winning the toss, I chose to bat . This caused quite a few team members to query as to why. I gave some vague reasons, which were fairly unconvincing. What I wanted was for us to have some confidence in our batting and then use our strong battery of bowlers to bring us a win. No strategy survives a punch on the nose to quote from another sport and after 15 overs, with us 18 for 2 this particular strategy was struggling. Against impressive opening bowlers we staggered to 45 for 3 by drinks at 20 overs. We were beginning though to settle in and Kevin Hodson and Jim Hodgson put on a partnership of 32 followed by Kevin and David Foster’s 40 together. With Kevin out for a heroic 37 which did not include a single boundary, it was Matt who finished off the innings with a quick 9 not out. With 121 on the board we knew we had a defendable score in the conditions pertaining, albeit we thought it would be tight.
In the event it was not so tight at all. Ongar could not cope with Matt and Ahsan's accuracy and speed and given the fairly modest total I kept the two openers on for 14 overs to ensure pressure on the batsmen coming in. Ten overs in and they were 15 for 3; Ongar were in difficulty with our pace and Arun B and David Foster were just as successful as our openers. After 20 overs they were 39 for 5 and did not look like getting near our score. I was unusually ruthless in keeping pace going and staying with just our four seam bowlers, having seen Ongar conceding runs when they shared out the bowling. We kept it tight, our poor spinners getting just one ball between us, Brian taking their last wicket with it.
It was a super team effort and we concentrated hard on fielding sharply , taking 4 catches- Mohsin, myself and two athletic caught- bowled by David and Arun. Against that Ongar took just one catch and dropped several. We took three bonus points with such a convincing win and it sets us nicely for our return match with Swords this weekend coming. Well done lads!
P.S. Thanks to Sean Conroy for keeping the Scorebook so professional: The most complete scoring i've ever seen for H2.
Des Drumm 10/5/24