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It was always going to be difficult game against second placed Gypsies on Saturday with key players missing (Sharpy, Riordo, Nirav and Yogesh) – but we had a decent bowling line-up and the plan was to field first, contain and then hopefully chase down a low score !
We welcomed back Jess who’d impressed in his one previous game and, coming out of retirement, club legend Maca.
The first innings went to plan. We won the toss, asked Gypsies to bat and then had probably our best all round bowling effort of the season. It was good to have a proper quick bowler (Jess, 1-27), who shook up a few Gypsies batsmen and Romo (1-23) again bowled a tight opening spell. Gypsies had a few batsmen who got going but lost wickets regularly and we were always on top. Wickets were spread around with AB 1-14, Lindfield recruit James 2-24 and Dhruv (3-25). Dhruv bowled beautifully, although his request for a rest with figures of 2-8 after 4 overs had some older bowlers scratching their heads. Naturally we dropped 5 catches (which would have interested Sharpy’s fines committee spy), though with Big Show grabbing two and a stumping plus 2 excellent catches in the deep from Shero and a smart catch from Maca at short midwicket, our fielding was otherwise very good. After 35 overs, Gypsies innings closed at 8-148.
Fair to say our batting has been inconsistent this season and we knew we had to bat well to chase 148. We started badly with Cagey falling in the second over and then Dhruv, who’d hit 3 lovely fours, holed out at deep midwicket to leave us 22-2. But then Jess and AB slowly steadied the ship and by drinks we were 56-2. Immediately after drinks Jess got going, Gypsies spinner feeling the brunt with 3 overs for 39 and the ball regularly clearing the rope. Jess ended up with a superb 83 (6 x 6, 7 x 4) with AB (‘just the one’) on 20 (2 fours, & er, no sixes). Lindfield James, a self-described “bowler who bats a bit”, actually looked the other way around as he spanked a couple of sixes, and with a very important contribution from Shero (0 no) we got home with 7 overs to spare, 96 coming off our last 10 overs.
An excellent win that still leaves us in the mix for Finals even though we are propping up the table. The Dreggs are clear at the top, though only 11 points separates second place to last and 4 points 4th place to last. Need to keep winning.