1st XI: Taz Fires on all Cylinders!!

After last weeks excellent performance we were at Eversholt which from previous encounters always proved to be a runfest!

Eversholt won the toss and elected to bat on a nice looking track, We opened up as usual with Majid Khan and young pacer Toqeer Hussain who is the leading wicket taker.
Which he demonstrated by clean bowling the opener in his first delivery! this brought in the Eversholt skipper who looked solid at the crease and playing some lovely shots to the cover boundary. The opener at the other end Nigel Farmer looked just as good at the crease and was hitting shots at will, Eversholt raced to 98-1 off 22 overs! It looked as if we would be chasing 250+ on this awesome looking batting wicket aka Road!

Brett Harvey had a go as first change but could not get his radar right and was going at 6 runs an over, Bobby then bowled a good spell by keeping it tight 4 overs 0-12, so on came the spin twins of Cookie and Mazafar, they slowed the run rate completely down, Mazafar taking the wicket of the dangerous number 3 to further slow down Eversholt. Mazafar finishing on 10 overs 1 wicket for 23 runs was an excellent return considering there was hardly any turn on offer. Cookie was no slouch as he returned figures of 2-34 off his 10 overs, young toqeer returned to finish his spell and ending on 2-22 off his 10 overs at only 17 years of age he is becoming a fine opening bowler. Eversholt finished on 181 of their 50 overs, we all felt they were about 100 short of making it a good game.

Adeel Khan is fast becoming a reliable leg spinner someone that we call on when we need wickets and change momentum of the game. We are lucky as a team that we have 3 spinners. Adeel took 1-19 off 5 overs again brilliant figures considering it was a batting wicket.

What followed can only be described as carnage, the skipper and Taz were going at more or less 10 runs per over and showing what a good wicket this was before Maz played a daft shot and was caught for 44 in the 9th over, young Hailey joined Taz at the crease Taz played some unbelievable strokes! Hitting the ball to all parts with crisp timing; it was a joy to watch as he hit 15 fours and 3 sixes to a super quick century. This allowed Hailey to play without pressure and spend some time at the wicket which he badly needed. Taz finished 103 not out and Hailey 19 not out as we chased the score in 24 overs!!

Skipper said after the game " the guys are starting to show why they rated so highly at the club and the confidence is running high, i still believe we are at 50% off our potential and will cause some serious damage this season when firing on all cylinders. Taz played superb and deserves high praise as he made sure he finished the game. We welcome some new players at the club next week which should make for even more exciting cricket at Rickmansworth"