I am running out of words to describe these thrilling 2ndXi games. This weekend’s match against Atherstone was on par with THAT finish against Bablake. In a way from my point of view it was better because we had five under seventeen’s playing and they ALL made valuable contributions.
Now to the game. We lost the toss and surprisingly they decided to bat. It is becoming a nice habit of taking wickets at regular intervals and that trend continued. Sooty again removed their openers with 30 on the board. Ray (Iltaf Rehman) came on and his control and pace were much improved and he too knocked over two of their batters. That left them in a hole at 56-4 in 22overs. Another bowling change and more wickets fell as Qasim bowled with the same control and finished with 2-29 from five overs. Humais, who was playing his first for the 2nd Xi also held his nerve to have figures of 4-0-9-1. By this stage they were seven down and we were running out of the 3 hours allocated to finish our overs. One of their guys made it clear that they would claim the extra overs if we went over our allocated finish time. We had 45 minutes to bowl 18 over or take 3 wickets. It was time to bring Nigle back on to try to finish them off and true to form he removed their number 7 thanks to an outstanding catch by young wicketkeeper Kam who took it diving in front of 1st slip. We evetutally bowled them out for 162-10 from 42 overs – just five minutes before the allocated time! It of course meant we had all of 57 overs to chase down their target.
The batting again did not go according to plan and with 2 unfortunate LBW decisions we were left on 63-5 and things weren’t looking too cleaver. The next bit is harder to write-up because I’m not one for wanting the spotlight, so I’ll keep it brief. I had opened the batting and just hung around for as long as I could. Those watching, which by the way included the club Chairman, a number of Honorary Vice Presidents and the ex-Warwickshire and England wicket-keeper Geoff Humpage who came to the ground to see some of his Ashfield pals may say my knock was a bit pedestrian, others may say it was boring but some said it was well timed. Having slowly got nearer to their score it left us needing run a ball for the last 60 runs. At this stage Calum came in at number 8 and made a valuable 34 which kept us in touch with the run rate. Calum’s contribution should not be underestimated in this run chase he struck a 6 and 4 4’s. It again came down to the last 2 overs and left us needing 12 to win. We ticked over the runs and the scoreboard showed us wanting 6 to win of the last over. However, having asked the scorers to double check the target it turned out that THEIR scorer had made an error and in fact we only needed 4 to win. I was held at deep mid-on for 61 and with 3 balls left we needed 3 to win, up stepped Humais and he cleared the in field and slapped it over cover point for 4! Another win! That leaves us just 9 points behind the leaders.
I know I keep going on about it BUT have a look at the extras AGAIN they will cost us a game. Lets sort it lads!
Scorecard: Atherstone
M Alocock ct Butt Sutton 14
A Miller Bowled Sutton 12
P Oldham LBW Rehman 8
A Williams Bowled Q Shah 13
D Brooks Ct Qamar Udoh 35
M Webb Bowled Q Shah 3
M Sworovski Ct Q Shah Rehman 2
T Niblock Ct Mahmood Butt 1
R Box Not Out 11
G Thomas LBW Udoh 4
M Riley Ct Shams Bourne 4
Sub total 107
Extras 55
TOTAL 162
N Udoh 12-2-46-2
M Sutton 8-2-16-2
I Rehman 8-0-26-2
Q Shah 5-0-29-2
H Butt 4-0-9-1
O Shah 4-2-2-0
C Bourne 1.2-0-6-1
Scorecard: Moseley Ashfield
S Shams Ct Sworowisk 61
Q Shah LBW Nibolock 2
I Rehman LBW Nibolock 2
T Mahmood Ct Thomas 28
O Shah Ct Alcock 0
N Udoh Ct Oldham 6
K Qamar Bowled Thmoas 12
C Sheehan Run Out 34
H Butt Not Out 11
C Bourne Not Out 0
M Sutton DID NOT BAT
Sub total 156
Extras 7
TOTAL 163
