Spirits v Proctor & Gamble 11th February 8am

Most of us had turned up just prior to the 8am kick off. These early games – damp grass – no “occasional waft of a curry lunch in the air”, the bar wasn’t even open. You could tell there was a bar nearby as there were a few empty bottles around the ground. Also Sean Brown’s breath smelled of a brewery after seemingly coming straight to the ground from a Friday night at Briggs.  

John and Paul started the innings in an Australian opening partnerships and it was Paul who started the scoring hitting Bakir for 10 runs in the second over including a magnificent square cut for 4 runs. Mr IPAD had 4 runs through square leg but the ipad  might have confused Paul feet as he backed away to squared leg to play the square cut. Bakir got Paul in his first ball of his next over, trying to repeat the shot but fell to a good catch, 1/17 off 3.1 overs. John went soon after to a better than average P&G bowler, Venkat, who finished with 1/10 off his 4 overs. Ashok fell over in the middle of the pitch while backing up and was still getting up when he was run out, Satish’s 4 off 12 balls included a four before being bowled, left the Spirits on 4/35 off 7.3 overs. Raj was in for 3 overs before he lofted a catch to midoff 5/42 off 10.4 overs and Spirits were struggling in the 25 over match. Captain Mike Mehaffey was at the crease and was joined by Sean Brown and buoyed by the recent Tests results by New Zealand decided to turn this 25 over match to a 5 day test match. Sean followed instruction perfectly as we scored 8 runs off the next 4 overs, including 17 dot balls. After 15 overs we were 5/51 and P&G were feeling sorry for us so they brought on Hardy to buy a wicket. Not sure if buying a wicket worked but the 7 wides off his bowling helped. At the other end Sean went for an attacking shot, beautiful hook shot, but unfortunately he missed the ball and it went smashing into his check. This woke Sean up a bit but didn’t help the strike rate. After 20 overs we had rocketed to 5/69, 5 overs left. The power play was called and Mike hit a four, his first of the innings and the first since Satish’s in the 6^th over. 14 off that over could have been the start of something special but alias with all calls of a powerplay, a wicket fell. Sean was given a juicy full toss but could only get it as far as the inner circle and he was caught for 13 off 37 balls. Rammy next in and out for 1 and Ian Law for a golden quack left us 8/88 off 23 overs. Virgin Spirit Mayur came in and smashed 9 runs off the 3 balls he faced before Mike was finally out for a steadily compiled 33 off 47 balls. Yiqi can in and was runout attempting the second and we finished with 107 off 25 overs.

A quick brunch of curry puffs and cheese and cucumber sandwiches and Mike called his team in for the inspirational talk. We had to bowl one side of the wicket and stack the off side with fielders was the plan. Rammy was following instructions pretty well except for a few straighter ones that the left hander, Gunjan, put away for two’s.  Raj had a little trouble coming to terms with the philosophy and Rammy caught the disease, P&G had rocketed to 36 off 5 overs. Gunjan’s pitch map showed there may have been a need for 1 more player at deep square leg that may have saved a few boundaries, considering Spirits bowlers ability to bowl slightly to straight...

 

Sean Brown was sobering up and came on to bowl. Similar to last week, Sean was getting the ball to inswing and again he got a wicket with his second ball caught behind off an inside edge. After a couple of wides he also got the danger man Gunjar swinging the ball across the lefthander to get a leading edge and an easy catch to Ashok at first slip. Rammy then got an edge and Ashok took a good catch at first slip and P&G had a mini collapse and lost 3/3 off 7 balls. Raj followed Rammy at the other end and picked up a wicket maiden and P&G were 48/4 off 11. The worms had come together and the Spirits were back in it after 11 overs!

  

Sean started to get tired, Ashok dropped a catch at first slip, Raj lost his line, again, which meant 23 came off the next three overs. Captain Michael (Mehaffey not Clarke) through the ball to Virgin Mayur Bhanji to get a wicket and it worked his second over but 5 wides in the remainder of the over left him with 1/16 off 2 overs. Treasurer Ian Law came in and to prove he is as miserly with the ball as he is a Treasurer and bowled 2 overs for 3 runs including a wicket. Satish (1/20 off 5) bowled the last over but P&G got the runs with 2 overs to spare. Not enough runs from the top order and a few boundaries given away stopped a spirited fight back by the boys.

Doing fines before 12 O’clock seemed strange and it took a while to get the beers organised. Some of the fines were given to the captain who reduced the game to 25 overs to ensure the following game would start on time, it was a HP/misfits game $10! The test match consolidation that collected 30 runs in 11 overs was up for a fine plus the whole batting line up paid $10. Golden duck for Ian was expensive as was it for Amar. He only turned up to watched but was fined for selecting Yiqi who had a dislocated shoulder from a rugby accident during the week. Raj had a pretty bad day and was probably the worst plater of the match, there was no best player of the match but Sean may have got it for his bowling but a batting strike rate of 35% was hard to fathom. Venkat was P&G main player with 33 off 35 balls and 1/10 off 4 overs.

As the beers started there was some lively banter as Ranga and Gaurav were playing in the following game. Ranga got hit for two big sixes off his first two balls plus dropping another catch had Paul and the Spirits playing cheering loudly “Bring back Ranga”. Gaurav came on to bowl and fell to the same treatment and the Jakarta boys had made as many runs in 15 overs as we had for the whole match! Til next week.