7 May 2014

Club Cricket Conference v Middlesex 2nd XI, 6 May 2014 @ Radlett CC 

The 'good news' before even a ball was bowled was that two of our selected team were called up by Counties for their County debut – Tanweer Sikandar for Essex and Aaron West for Hampshire. Both I might add did themselves proud looking at the statistics. Following last year’s excellent victory we knew Middlesex would be throwing everything at us, indeed their team was made up of both Second Team and Academy Players, looking well balanced. As it is Middlesex’s 150th Anniversary we invited & were honoured to have in attendance not only the President of MCCC, Clive Radley, but their CEO, Vinny Codrington, as well as Director of Cricket and England Selector, Angus Fraser. Clearly our Boys were on show and had everything to play for. Middlesex won the toss and on a bright sunny day after early morning rain elected to bat. Maruf Chowdhury in his first over removed their opening bat Balbirnie, with a catch behind the wicket, but then runs seemed to flow quite freely. The second wicket came with the second bowling change Waqas Hussain bowling their other opener Eskinazi for 19 with the score at 50 for 2. Hopes were raised when Jamie Southgate had the new batsman caught immediately behind the stumps for 0 making it 3 for 52. However Thurston was by now making runs fairly freely although Jamie Southgate got into a rhythm with only the odd ball going to the boundary. To try to stem the run flow Michael Payne rotated the bowlers the best he could and at 110 got the next wicket when he introduced Marwan Mohammed to the attack, Scott out LBW for a competent 29. Middlesex were at 4 runs per over at the half way mark and the middle order did their job of getting 20s and 30s partnering the in form batsman Thurston to push the score along. However Thurston was last out just 10 short of his century, getting 90 off 111 balls very solidly and running between the wickets well. Patel and Sandhu then scored at a run a ball to complete the Middlesex innings at 248 for 7. Richard Wharton kept wicket well taking two catches and a good stumping with a clean sheet of byes, and the bowlers did very well to keep the last 20 overs down to only 120 runs, given Middlesex had wickets always in hand. The batsmen had to work for their runs and the fielding was up to standard with just a couple of lapses. The best of the bowlers was Michael Payne, the captain, with figures of 3 for 35, taking the responsibility of bowling the last ten overs at one end, including a maiden.

So at the half way mark it was ‘even-stevens’ with a rate of just 5 per over. The start of our innings was not good with a silly run out with only 9 on the board, but Ahmed Elech and Eddie Ballard put their heads down and accumulated at the required run rate up to 71 runs, when Ahmed was unluckily out LBW. Michael Payne and Eddie kept the scoreboard ticking over and at the half way mark of the innings we were nicely placed at 112 for only 2 wickets.

Eddie Ballard eventually went for a well earned 52, bowled by Fairhead, who had just bowled 3 overs for 7 runs. Unfortunately as happens in limited over cricket we lost wickets in the last 20 overs at the wrong time – needing only 106 in the last 20 overs with only 4 wickets down, so it was a question of accumulating runs. Balbirnie, Patel and Holden bowled intelligently and tightly in the later overs, pushing us to take more risks with the result of wickets and a run chase that got harder. Jamie Southgate, Richard Wharton and Maruf Chowdhry all tried their best with nearly a run a ball, but in the closing overs we were always just behind the asking rate.

We certainly did ourselves justice and showed even with a team depleted of two players taken for their County Debut that we can play good cricket at a high level – so v Middlesex 2’s, it is won one, lost one. Let’s make sure we win the decider next season.

John Poore

CCC Match Manager (for v Middx 2nd XI match)

Full scorecard here