Sunday 2nd XI vs Sheen Park

On a hot day Putney won the toss and controversially chose to field in the baking sun (distant memory now). It was at this stage the team realised that we only had 10 men (for the third time in four games which is becoming increasingly frustrating).

Fortunately Dev was able to stand in for the 40 overs in the field (much appreciated), something I'm sure he (and fantasy team captains) later regretted as the captain gave him the short straw of bowling at batsmen looking to up the run rate with wickets in hand....

Initially fielding looked like a good decisions as Putney restricted the scoring rate of Sheen to approximately 3 runs an over. The usual ferocious seam pairing of Willcock (2-42) and Henson (1-46) caused some early damage, ably supported by Chad Richardson (2-33).

The game looked finely balanced until their number 6 batsman realised that he had been given a second Christmas. I personally lost track of the number of times he managed to "pick" the gap in our field or carve a sweet edge through the slips, gully or fine leg for runs. That said he made the most of his chances (and a couple of half chance catches we might have taken) and gradually got his eye in, making us pay by swinging his bat effectively in tandem with the opposition skipper (89 and 58 respectively). As a result Sheen finished on a daunting total of 255-7.

We set about the task at hand in a decent fashion. The mainstay of the innings was Shipar Ahmed who scored a good 40, increasing in confidence as the game went on (if only he could learn to call the opposition might be as scared as I was batting with him when deciding to go for a single!). There were good contributions as well from Preveen with 26 and some text book big hitting from Henson (11). We finished a long way short of our target (154-8) but managed not to give the opposition the satisfaction of bowling us out and batting our full overs allocation.

Special mentions should go to Mr Cricket Devin Ebersohn for helping us out in the field and Usman Amin who offered to come down and play for us at short notice before we noticed Dev lurking on the boundary ropes.

Richard Wilson
June 6, 2012