The Spirits team arrived at the Dempsey Hill grounds all bright eyed and bushy tailed after coming off two very good wins in the previous two weeks’ Veterans League matches. This optimism, if you like, was soon to change however. Unfortunately there is not much to write home about regarding this match as the Spirits middle-order and tail-enders could not live up to the absolutely, brilliant and match winning displays of batting from the previous two weeks. Captain Sandeep missed out on the toss due to “not finding” the venue, so John Sist decided to bat after winning the toss.
John and Dave Lee once again started out like F1 drivers at the green light and quickly accumulated a 57 run partnership before John had his now customary retirement on 30 runs. Patrick took to the stage but could unfortunately not match John’s prowesses and quickly surrendered his wicket for 3 runs. I think, and I’m guessing here, that staying up till 6:30 in the morning probably had something to do with that? Paul McLean then joined Dave in the middle and as per the norm did not hang around. He was eventually bowled for 21 of 22 balls, but not before Dave got a dubious (his own admission) LBW call to be dismissed for 25 off 31 balls. With the score on nelson for 3 after 18 overs, the more positive players in the team were certain of a competitive score of 180 plus. It was not to be though. Sandeep managed to score a nuggetty 35 runs before being retired and after that nothing of note further from the remaining 6 batsmen. With the score on 134/4 Spirits then battled to 152 all out, even after John Sist returned to the pitch for a quick fire 10 additional runs to take his tally to 40 off 44 balls. With 8, 9 and 10 all getting the dreaded ducks which included a golden duck for one nameless player who got his 5th or 6th golden for the year, nobody’s counting that though, and another particular Spirits member claiming a Diamond Duck without even facing a ball or hitting his new bat in anger. In the end Spirits were about 70 odd runs shy of a competitive score.
So that was that with regards to the batting.
On a small field as the Dempsey the 153 runs for victory seemed attainable within even the bonus point margin, so it was all up to the Spirits team to make a game of it, but even this did not materialise as the SCC batsmen were well up for it and managed to get the total within 24 overs and therefore claimed the full house of points and also the lead in the Veterans League.
After the initial wicket fell on 38 (Oakden - 18 off 20; brilliantly caught at deep point by Sean Brown off Maingard’s bowling; the Saffers combining for the first wicket), there was not much with regards to chances until Maingard once again listened to his ‘keeper and “used the wicket” to have Byefield (23 off 15) caught at gully by Graeme Gardener. Shah retired on 33 off 52; Sukanti on 32 off 28 and the final runs were wrapped up by Beer (27 off 28) and Ash (1*) to win the match for the SCC quite comprehensively by 8 wickets.
The Spirits will look forward to picking themselves up for the final game against ANZA on the 29th and will look to improve their scoring rates, especially in the middle-order and will hope to see their tail-enders return to their island wide status as match winning batsmen.
Man-of-the-Match – cannot really say there was one particular individual in either team to take these honours, although Kulshaan did bowl very well for SCC to keep the Spirits batsmen virtually scoreless and under pressure. This was until the last of his 5 overs when he was unceremoniously “klapped*” for 16 runs to end up with a less flattering 1/24 in 5 overs. John Sist with his 40 off 44 was the highest score of the day and probably also came close.
*klapped – South African slang for being hit all over the park
No comments:
Post a Comment