Kidmore End 174-9
dec.
D. Singh 4-34, Withers 3-49
RUASCC 175-3
Fawaz 72 not out, Asim 40
RUASCC won by 7
wickets
Such was the state of some of the RUASCC players on arrival
at sunny Kidmore End you would have thought the local ambulance service had a
problem with its sat-nav. Zia rocked up
with a heavily bandaged right hand and declared he was unable to bowl, Dip’s
lower back pain rendered him unable to keep wicket, Singh (D) struggles to walk
fluently at the best of times and that’s before we even think about Eagles
knees. The good news was that there were
enough youngsters like Ward, Weeks and Fawaz to add vitality to the team. And of course there’s Withers, fresh from
running the Wargrave 10k in a personal best 44:03 just a couple of hours
earlier.
Eagle won the toss and put the home side in, with Ward
taking the keeping gloves, and on a splendid batting pitch the Kidmore openers
had a look at Withers for a couple of overs before smashing boundaries at will
over mid-wicket and long-on. It could
have been a long and miserable afternoon but the lively Fawaz broke through in
the twelfth over (with the score already on 55) and Withers removed the other
opener in the next. From here the scoring
slowed dramatically and Withers took two more wickets, the first thanks to a
sharp catch into Zia’s injured hand at silly mid-on. Having seen his first six overs smeared for
33 runs, Withers recovered to finish on 3-49 from 12.
Best bowling figures of the day went to the younger Singh
brother whose first wicket came when a mis-timed drive flew to the left of
Eagle at mid-off and the captain covered the ground with the grace of an
arthritic giraffe before plucking the ball from the heavens with an
outstretched left hand. It was a catch
no one else in the team could have made simply through the lack of being 6’5”
tall and it brought howls of delight and incomprehension from all sides of the
ground.
When Singh finally removed Driscoll for 37 the score was
148-6 and despite some powerful late hitting from Frost the innings concluded
on 174-9, shortly after debutant Asim had picked up his first RUASCC wicket.
After tea Withers made the long pilgrimage to the scorer’s
box on the far side of the ground. Now
it cannot be denied that the Kidmore score box is a comfortable,
well-proportioned little cabin with an excellent view of the pitch – the only
problem is that its sodding numbers don’t work so you have to keep leaving the
box and smacking the front of it every time the total passes 0 or 4 which, by
the way, it does quite often when Fawaz is creaming the bowling to every
conceivable part of the boundary.
The RUASCC innings began in bizarre fashion with Eagle’s pal
New taking the first over and setting the perfect field as the skipper pretended not to notice:
After a couple of dot balls the temptation proved too great and Eagle cut to the boundary (through backward point, of
course). The experiment was aborted after a single over and
the field returned to normal, but both Eagle and Asim took to the task nicely
and both men had three fours as their only scoring strokes before the first
single was taken. Asim in particular seemed
to be in a hurry and another three boundaries took the first wicket partnership
past fifty in just the tenth over.
As so often happens to RUASCC/Eagle, a change of bowling brought
an immediate wicket when Eagle was caught from Cooke’s first delivery. When Ward was bowled in the same bowler’s
next over it was 65-2 but that brought Fawaz to the crease and, like his
batting partner, he was in for a good time: 19 runs were added in the two overs
immediately following Ward’s dismissal and with 20 overs remaining fewer than
100 were needed.
By the time Asim had been caught off a high full toss for
40, an excellent innings that included nine fours, Fawaz had raced to 25 and he
was joined by Weeks who intelligently rotated the strike to allow his partner
to get on with it. A six and several
more boundaries took Fawaz to his second RUASCC fifty and when the 26th
over went for 15 runs it brought up the fifty stand out of which Weeks had
scored five.
With victory in sight Weeks hit a couple of boundaries of
his own before Fawaz sealed the win thanks to a misfield from the first ball of
the 28th over.
RUASCC Highlights: Eagle’s remarkable left-handed catch, closely
seeing off Zia’s remarkable right-handed catch.
Splice these two together and we’d have the ultimate fielding machine.
RUASCC Man of the
Match: Fawaz.
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