Theale &
Tilehurst 193-8 (44 overs)
Withers 3-27, Stewart 2-19, Adil 1-24
RUASCC 197-4 (34.2 overs)
Adil 83 not out, Nadeem 45, Fawaz 19
RUASCC won by 6
wickets
For more than 10 years I’ve been playing against this
team. I made my RUASCC debut against them, I recorded my best bowling figures against them and we’ve been playing against them
twice every year so I’ve written quite a few match reports about them too. For 10 years I’ve been calling them “Tilehurst
and Theale” because that’s what it says on our official fixture cards, so
imagine my surprise when I just looked more closely at their club website and
discovered that they’re actually called “Theale and Tilehurst”. My world has been turned quite upside-down, and I have no idea to whom I should apologise.
Nevertheless, Sunday’s match against both of them saw a
welcome return to form and a comfortable win for RUASCC with more than six
overs to spare.
Blessed with a strong line-up that somehow accommodated nine
bowlers and eight batsmen Eagle finally located his middle order, though the principal
contributions were from unexpected sources.
Nadeem, a player we’ve previously only used as an off-spin bowler but
who is, apparently, a wicketkeeper-batsman, made a strong 45 to support Adil,
who would have been batting at number seven in this game had it not been for
Dip unselfishly rearranging the order.
The pair rescued RUASCC from a perilous 33-3, adding 121 together in 20
overs. And when Nadeem finally departed
we were treated to debutant Younus Khan confidently seeing us over the finish
line.
Having lost the toss and been asked to bowl we were relieved
to see that this wasn’t quite the batting paradise we’re used to at this ground. The pitch not quite so hard and true; the
outfield a bit more forgiving for the chasing fielder. Withers kept things tight with three early
maidens but it was largely thanks to another fascinating episode of Can’t Catch, Won’t Catch that the young
left-handed opener managed to pass fifty despite timing the ball precisely once
in two hours at the crease.
At drinks T&T were 66-2 and while the run-rate increased
significantly in the second half of the innings a flurry of late wickets kept
the score below 200. Ken Stewart, a week
short of his 75th birthday, took the pace off the ball to great
effect and could have had more than his two wickets but for dropped catches and
a missed stumping.
While a target of 194 could have seemed plenty to a side who
hadn’t scored more than 161 this year, something about the way Fawaz set off in
the first few overs gave us cause for optimism.
His dismissal threated to derail the chase completely until Nadeem and
Adil came together, and their powerful but controlled hitting, not to mention a few more dropped catches, set us up for
victory.
RUASCC Man of the
Match: Adil, by quite some margin.
RUASCC
Team: Eagle (capt), Fawaz, D. Singh, Nadeem, Adil,
Khan, Dip (wkt), Waqar, Karthee, Stewart, Withers
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