Birdlip (A) – 8.8.14

Birdlip 158-5 (20 overs)

Zia 2-13, Main 2-33, Withers 1-17

RUASCC 159-3 (18.1 overs)

Zia 62 not out, Griffiths 41 not out, Extras 33

RUASCC won by 7 wickets

This was our third game against Birdlip, the third time Ian Green has scored 70-odd not out against us and eventually our third excellent win.  The only game of our 2014 tour saw the welcome returns of Carpenter, Manoj Kumar and Young Sam Griffiths to the RUASCC side.

Batting first Birdlip recovered from 9-3 to post a competitive total but Zia and Young Sam chased it down in the darkness with 11 balls to spare, Griffiths sealing the win with a six over square leg.  Up to this point it was Zia’s highest score of the season, and since Sam spends most of his time playing football and management consulting these days it was nice to see he can still use a cricket bat too.

Now, it would be all too easy to pick out the negatives from our 2014 tour of Cheltenham which is good because that’s exactly what we’re going to do.

After a month of sunshine in the UK it became apparent in the week leading up to tour that the weather was looking dodgy at best.  Tropical Storm Bertha was making her way across the Atlantic and was poised to dump her not inconsiderable load upon the west of England effectively obliterating Sunday.  No problem, we had games lined up for Friday and Saturday.  Hang on, except that Aldsworth just called and said they couldn’t raise a team.  So we were left with one 20/20 game on the Friday evening, which was played in near-constant drizzle and was completed before our 12^th player, Dr Ashman had even arrived in Cheltenham.

There followed an enjoyable evening with a good meal, plenty of wine and several rounds in the hotel bar before my 6.30am start caught up with me and I headed to my room faced with the prospect of a snoring Kiwi and an ineffective air-conditioning system.  Fortunately I was suitably anaesthetised and made it through to the morning relatively unscathed.

On Saturday we had to make our own entertainment.  Several headed to New Road to watch Worcestershire chase down 300 to win an exciting one-day game while others (OK, just Bruce and me) went for a walk up a hill.  This would have been a welcome excursion had we not spent four hours walking up and down hills the previous day.  Tiring of hills and walking, we headed to the nearest pub with a TV and watched the final session of the fourth Test Match (India 33-1 at tea, all out by close).  And that was as much cricket as we got.

After spending a couple of hours eating and drinking in the pub, it was time to go out eating and drinking.  Eagle had booked an excellent curry house but didn’t know where it was, so we all left the hotel following Chan, who also didn’t know where it was.  Fortunately Chan had satnav on his phone so we spent the next 25 minutes getting lost while Chan looked at this phone.  Having wandered down yet another dead end we were finally pointed in the right direction by a couple of locals and soon we were seated in a curry house far too posh for the likes of us.

As I looked at the menu, struggling to decide between the £21 biryani and the £20 tikka masala (I needn’t have worried, my meal somehow cost £38 anyway) I was presented with a jeroboam of warm taste-free beer that someone else thankfully ended up drinking for me.  That said, the food was nice, as it pissing well ought to have been for £38, and the company adequate.

Sure enough Bertha arrived on Sunday morning and soon it was confirmed that there would be no cricket that day either.  So for two and a half hours I sat at the breakfast buffet joined by various teammates in turn, reading a free newspaper eating croissant after croissant and wishing I’d got more sleep.  At 11am we all checked out of the hotel and decided not much else remained to do but get home as quickly as possible.

Fantastic weekend away, can’t wait till next year!

RUASCC Man of the Match:  Two wickets and an unbeaten fifity, I reckon probably Zia.

RUASCC Team:  Zia, Malde, Ward (wkt2), Carpenter, Griffiths (wkt1), Eagle (capt), Kumar, Main, Tranter, Stewart, Withers

Frieth (A) – 24.8.14

Frieth 167 all out

Zia 6-42, Withers 2-11

RUASCC 168-2

Zia 115 not out, Ward 28 not out, Murphy 10

RUASCC won by 8 wickets

It can appear, on occasion, that he’s playing a different game to the rest of us – there is after all a reason he’s won Player of the Year four seasons in a row.

But this was a truly extraordinary performance.  Has anyone in the club’s history has ever taken six wickets and scored a century in the same match?  I’ve seen Zia take wickets before and I’ve seen him score runs before, but I have never seen a game so utterly dominated by one player.  I have never seen anyone treat reasonable bowling with such flagrant disregard.

Set 168 to win we reached our target in 22.3 overs, and this was not a batting track – it offered plenty for the bowlers with variable bounce and the cloud cover helping the ball move around.  We were 14-2 after left-armer Harry Williams had once again proved too good for our opening batsmen.

Zia simply negated any threat to his wicket by smashing everything slightly under or overpitched.  The more he smashed, the more the bowling played into his hands - there was one straight drive that Dr Ashman umpiring said he heard “fizzing” along the grass.  There were cuts, pulls and drives to every part of the boundary - it didn’t matter where the fielders went, the ball was hit somewhere else.

Several of the home side seemed to accept their fate before the drinks break - in the face of adversity reduced to laughter and bafflement at the onslaught they were witnessing.  Williams didn’t return after his initial five-over spell.  Zia passed fifty with his 11^th four and accelerated from there, reaching the 90s in his tenth over at the crease.  At the other end Michael Ward played the perfect captain’s innings, running quick singles and rotating the strike to allow Zia to impose himself on the bowling.

Another four brought up his hundred and a few overs later a push into the offside sealed victory by 8 wickets.  Zia’s unbeaten 115 included 21 fours and two sixes, and a quick check of the scorebook suggests he faced about 55 deliveries in total.

Earlier in the day, after Ward had won the toss and opted to field but lied to us and told us he’s lost the toss and pretended that we’d been asked to field, Withers struck in the first over to leave Frieth 0-1.  Withers then proceeded to send down 11 overs conceding just 11 runs, in case you needed further proof that conditions were helpful for bowlers.  In contrast Zia’s opening spell was, by his standards, distinctly average and he was replaced by Waqar as the second wicket stand added 94.  Zia returned to wreak havoc, clean bowling four of his victims on his way to his second six-wicket haul on this ground in three years.

Ashman was unlucky not to pick up a wicket as two clear chances were dropped, otherwise the bowling was well supported by two run outs, including a direct hit by Ward which was remarkable mostly because the fielder had only one stump to aim at but it wasn’t the one he actually hit.

This was RUASCC’s fourth consecutive victory and Ward continues his 100% winning record as skipper.

RUASCC Man of the Match:  Oh do shut up.

RUASCC Team:  Murphy, D. Singh, Ward (capt), Zia, Karthee, Weeks (wkt), Waqar, Malde, Ashman, Stewart, Withers

BBC Caversham (H – at Kidmore End) – 3.8.14

BBC Caversham 90 all out

Waqar 4-24, Ashman 2-14, Withers 2-24

RUASCC 91-4

Greenhalf 40 not out, Extras 24, Dip 16

RUASCC won by 6 wickets

The outcome of this game was always likely to be determined by which BBC team turned up.  If it was the team we bowled out for 27 a few years ago we would probably be OK.  If, however, it was the team that turned up for this fixture last season, the one that scored more than 200 and had us struggling to a draw with nine wickets down, well, that would be an entirely different prospect.

In the end it was somewhere in between, but certainly leaning toward the “27” side.  BBC were reduced to 49-6 after opening spells from Withers and Waqar (the bowlers aided by three LBW decisions) and although they rallied briefly adding 31 for the seventh wicket, the lethal combination of Stewart and Ashman helped to polish off the tail inside 30 overs.

The fielding was unusually sharp with Nadeem in particular impressing in the slips and gully region, and the performance was capped by a sensational diving catch by Ward running in from the boundary.

Faced with what should have been a routine run chase the RUASCC response got off to a terrible start.  Ward (0), Eagle (7) and Daman Singh (3) all departed to leave us 12-3 before Dip Patel and Andy Greenhalf salvaged the situation with a partnership of 73 in just 14 overs.  Only Dip’s bizarre run out prevented the pair from seeing us home, but it proved to be a minor glitch as Nadeem clipped the winning run from the final ball of the 20^th over.

With tour coming up next weekend this seems like an appropriate time to sum up the season so far.  So here goes:

Out of 13 games played we’ve won six, drawn four and lost three.  The three defeats have all been close (5 runs, 1 run, 2 wickets) but at the same time two of the draws have been salvaged only by the last wicket partnership.  We’ve successfully chased scores of 212 and 193, successfully defended 109 and bowled opposition teams out for 48, 82, 90 and 104.

Leading wicket takers by quite some distance are Waqar (24) and Withers (20) who regularly open the bowling and carry the lion’s share of the workload.  In fact between them they have bowled more than 40% of the overs and taken more than 40% of the wickets.

The only other bowler in double figures is Dr Ashman (10) and he’s missed more than a month of the season for the World Cup.  The only other bowlers to take more than two wickets in an innings are Nadeem (5-15) and Jordan (4-26) but despite this we have managed to bowl out the opposition six times, more than we sometimes manage in a whole season.

Michael Ward (244) is the leading run-scorer to date having made two fifties and two further scores above 30 at the top of the order.  This bodes well going into tour where he typically cranks it up after a couple of beers.  Of the batsmen turning out regularly both Eagle (47, 31, 30) and Greenhalf (40, 33) have made useful contributions, but many of the standout knocks have been from guests and occasional players.  Adil (83), Rafiq (60), Jas Singh (50, 44), Fawaz (49), Nadeem (45) and Dersh (47, 35) have all put in match-winning performances while Loader (57) and Daman Singh (59) have excelled in defeat.

In a season where key players like Zia, Saad, Main and Baker have turned out only occasionally we have benefitted from more regular appearances by Waqar, Daman Singh, Greenhalf and Nadeem, as well as newcomers like Karthee and Murphy.  Credit should go to the Captain for putting together a full team (almost) every week capable of carrying a positive win record into August.

TOUR!!

RUASCC Highlight:  Ward’s catch on the boundary, probably the best of the season so far.

RUASCC Man of the Match:  Andy Greenhalf.

RUASCC Team:  Ward, Eagle (capt), D. Singh, Dip (wkt), Greenhalf, Nadeem, Karthee, Waqar, Stewart, Ashman, Withers

Peppard (A) – 13.7.14

RUASCC 145-9 dec.

D.Singh 59, Greenhalf 16, Harley 16

Peppard 148-8

Jordan 4-26, Waqar 2-28, Zia 1-19

RUASCC lost by 2 wickets

Have you ever sat alone in a quiet room, pondering the nature of existence?  Have you considered the notion that the world exists only in your imagination, and that “other people” simply cease to exist the moment you stop thinking about them?

Perhaps you can see the sun shining on neighbouring rooftops; trees swaying in the breeze.  Close your eyes, are they still there?  Maybe you pick up a book filled with the unconscious thoughts from the unexplored areas in the back of your mind.  The author doesn’t exist; that book is whatever you think it might be.

Weird, huh?  You invented God, Roald Dahl, Jabba the Hutt and Michael McIntyre.  What the hell is wrong with you?  Your wife, your boss, your bin men: all imagined, all lurking in the dark waiting for you to think them back to life.

Have you ever missed a RUASCC game?  Have you ever wondered how such an event might pan out without you, without the logical progression of the afternoon unfolding as you might experience it?  Obviously it doesn’t really happen.  You weren’t there, so how could it?

But it was on the fixture list so it must have happened.  And you didn’t imagine it raining in Reading that day so there’s no reason it would have been called off.  So in your logical, rational brain it must have happened, therefore runs must have been scored and wickets must have been taken.  But who, and how, and in what order?  Remember, the brain needs to make it somehow believable or the façade will slip and you’ll be confronted with the limitations of the universe in your own head and you’ll go absolutely stark staring bonkers.

Step one

In order to invent a story that makes some kind of sense you need to hear it from a reputable source: how about an email from the “Captain”, “Dr Eagle”  Or a match report from that bowler.

Step two

It needs to be somehow in keeping with what you expect: we couldn’t get a full team together, and we lost.

Seems reasonable so far.

Step three

Players you “know” need to be consistent: couple of wickets for Waqar; Greenhalf hits 16 in the middle order.  Righty-ho.

Step four

Leave no clues that the entire match is simply the concoction of a fragile imagination: Daman Singh scored 59.

Daman Singh scored 59.

DAMAN SINGH SCORED FIFTY-NINE!!!!

The world goes dark.  You hear the sound of screaming.  You realise it’s coming from you.

You are alone.

RUASCC Man of the Match:  Well, probably Daman if you believe a damn word of it.

RUASCC Team:  Alfie (guest), D.Singh, Karthee, Zia (capt), Dip, Greenhalf (wkt), Main, Waqar, Harley (guest), Jagesh, Jordan (guest)