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Another ‘could’ve, should’ve won’ game
We won the toss, and same idea as last week – play to strength, ask GenX Royals to bat and look to chase a lowish score.
The first part of the plan worked pretty well despite a couple of sloggers coming off (actually to be fair one guy was a bit more than a slogger scoring a very quick 50). Bowlers were good again – especially Dhruv who bowled an excellent 7 over spell and finished with 2 for 9. Nirav after 2 overs had the remarkable figures of 3-0 (and in case of any confusion that’s 3 wickets for no runs) – until Bit-more-than-a-slogger took him for 26 in his third over ! (Nirav is still protesting he’d asked to be taken off after 2 overs 😊). The rest of the wickets were spread – Raj 2-20, AB 1-37, Shero 1-16 and we also saw a promising start from Cagey’s new recruit, ‘Phil’. We managed to restrict GenX Royals and it looked we’d be chasing 130ish but annoyingly their #9 played well and took the score to 163. Surprisingly, we didn’t drop a catch (indeed we had two excellent catches from Shero and Karl). No drops was a undoubtedly a season first and the second major surprise of the day - the first being Raj who was at the ground before anyone else!!.
164 was gettable, and with rain on the way we had to get off to a good start. We lost Dhruv early, but Cagey and Ray batted well and were laying a decent platform at 1-43 until Cagey got a good one and was bowled for 18 (but good to see some of the old Cagey fluency back). Ray batted well with his dad but was caught for an excellent 24. Romo promoted up the order to ‘have a go’ followed straightaway (‘I need to get to the nets AB’ he lamented afterwards). At drinks, the game was tight at 4-79 – but first ball Nirav was out (17) and was quickly followed by AB and Raj. We were in trouble at 7-85. Shero then joined Phil and things picked up – Shero hitting two big sixes and a couple of fours and Phil looking good in his first knock for us (also with a couple of sixes). The pair took us to 7 for 127, ahead of the asking rate and back in with a chance – but Phil was caught at mid-off for a well made 29 and Shero fell for 26. We were all out soon after for 128, 36 runs short of our target. Unfortunately, we just didn’t have enough batting on the day.
Realistically, we now probably need to win our last 4 games to qualify. It looks like 4 teams are going for one last spot with the top three opening up a gap. We’re one of the four and we play all the others in ‘must win’ games before the end of the season.