SANDYFORD 4: 238 for 5 off 40 overs
Batting: Piyush 57* Srinath 51 Viswa 28 Methuka 22 Jitesh 21 Raja 20*
Bowling: Senapathy 6-0-14-4 Jitesh 7-4-4-2 Nitesh 7-3-9-1 Vasanth 4-1-14-1
Menon 7-1-18-1 Raja 5-0-19-1 Velappa 2-0-21-0
HALVERSTOWN 2: 106 All out off 40 overs
Batting: A.Syed 33 Ajesh 24 S.Gordon 7 D.Drumm 5
Bowling: M.Hodgson 4-0-22-2 S.Hayes 3-0-12-1 A.Kurian 8-0-27-1
A.Syed 7-0-44 -1 J.Hodgson 3-0-15-0 Ajesh 6-0-33-0 D.Drumm 6-0-47-0 S.Conroy 3-0-27-0
My final words of the previous match report were “we just need less charity”. Well unfortunately we continued to dispense a great deal of charity, this time to Sandyford. Not that we could have won; they beat us comprehensively. But our dropped catches and poor fielding , especially at the boundaries, markedly worsened the gap between the teams. Our fielding got clumsier as their innings progressed, suggesting a fitness issue, but our heads dropped too with the catches dropped as we fielded some big hits. Sandyford had won the toss and opted to bat; “I have some good batsmen and I want to give them an opportunity to show what they can do” explained captain Vela. He was not wrong. We only took 5 wickets and bar Stuart Hayes’ caught -bowled dismissing Vasanth for 6, the other 6 batsmen scored over 20, with two hitting half centuries. It seemed like they all could bat.
Besides Stuart’s, two very fine catches indeed were taken by Jim Hodgson (one from son Mathew) and there was a smart catch behind the stumps by Cecil from Anoop Kurian. These were outnumbered by the drops, unfortunately. Mathew’s bowling was the pick of the Halverstown bunch with 2 for 22 off 4. Anoop Kurian laboured long and hard and was rewarded with a wicket, as was Ahsan. The rest toiled in vain.
It turned out that Sandyford could bowl too. Indeed some of them spectacularly well and scarily fast as their bowling figures attest. Jitesh’s, for example, had 4 maidens in 7 overs and took 2 for 4. No less impressive was Senapathy, who took 4 for 14 in 6 overs. Opener Nitesh had 3 maidens too. Against that firepower we wilted, except for Ahsan who did a fine job as opener, amassing 33 runs, his highest league total for Halverstown. Ajesh batted steadily in the middle order for 24. Unfortunately there was little support from the rest of the order and Stuart Gordon’s hard earned 7 was the third highest score. With the batting collapse we just looked to get to 100 and keep a bit of respectability. We did that. Then we thought it would be good to not lose all our wickets That looked on until I was bowled with the very last ball, which was a wide rebowled. That about summed up our day.
Des Drumm 6/6/22