A Maiden 50, with sunshine!

After a delayed start due to the oppo stuck in traffic, the game was restricted to 35 overs, Ricky batted first under sunny blue skies for the first time this season. It was a shaky start with Ray failing to repeat his excellence with the bat from last week. Shortly after Darshan Roy retired hurt. He spent an hour in the nets, whilst waiting for the opposition, maybe in hindsight the net session didn’t help?

However, the ship was steadied with excellent batting from Neil and Ramesh, both with some excellent boundaries. There was a wobble in the middle of the innings with Ken and James scoring 0 and 1 respectively and slowing down the run rate. However, Neil stood strong. Anuj and Neil then produced arguably the best batting of the match, Anuj with 45 hitting boundary after boundary and Neil went onto get his maiden 50, eventually carrying his bat with 63 not out. This left Ricky on 156 for 4 from their 35 overs. This was a good score on the top pitch.

Ricky’s bowling attempt started positively with Nassar taking two wickets in his second over, leaving Arkley 3 for 2. Both Nassar and Anuj bowled tight opening spells. However, it was clear Arkley’s opening batsman who was very good and had now played himself in and was seeing it like a football on what was a very soft pitch, as well as quick singles becoming the order of the day. Phil’s spell started with a stroke of luck as the batsman hit his second ball rank full toss straight to Nassar. Some sporadic bowling from Phil and Chris saw the run rate steadily increase and the game began to slip away from the home side. Tight spells at the end, again from Nassar and Anuj, were not enough to prevent Arkley reaching the total with a few overs to spare.

Overall a good game, with the sun beaming down!