It was a nice day out at the glorious Highgate CC, where Old Minchendenians won the toss and inserted us.
Jas-Bas and Toby Chasseaud opened the batting and the former hit a trademark pull for six before being bowled. Amandeep joined Toby at the crease before being similarly dismissed. Benbob was to suffer a similar fate, scoring six in each innings this weekend since turning pro.
Nick Epstein, in at No 5 as a specialist batsman for this match at the scene of his incredible match-winning 53 not out against Hadley Wood Green earlier in the season, took 12 balls to get off the mark before scoring a handy 25 in a 76 partnership with Chasseaud. He was out lofting a defensive push to mid off. Reny was caught and bowled in similar fashion. PBD came to the crease in his ice-hockey mask, which one Old Minch fielder mistook for a scuba-diving mask, and hit a powerful pull shot before being bowled. Timbob also had his stumps rattled by Hayran, who would finish with six wickets, five of them bowled.
This brought Ahmed to the crease, professionally taking an off-stump guard to mitigate the wide-of-the-crease angle of Hayran and spurring Chasseaud on to play his shots. Chasseaud leapt from 75 to his hundred with a succession of sixes and fours, making the most of the life he’d been miraculously given on 45 when the ball clipped his leg stump but failed to dislodge the bails. Pacific’s leading run scorer of all time would then fall to a diving catch at long on.
Chasseaud’s 109 took him past Shivnarine Chanderpaul in the list of leading Test run scorers, and means he is now trailing another West Indies great, Brian Lara, by just 26 runs. True, the Sussexian’s runs may not have come against the likes of Allan Donald, Glenn McGrath and Muttiah Muralitharan, but he’s faced some reasonable medium pacers on some pretty dodgy tracks in his Pacific “first-class” career.
Joe Deighan and Phil Smith wagged at the tail end of the innings to take us past 200, thus earning us maximum points. But when Smith skied one the wise heads in the side feared that our 205 wasn’t enough, particularly as we’d only batted 40 overs out of a possible 45 (or 50 if we opted to sacrifice our batting points).
Philbert and Deighan opened the bowling for us and the latter was rewarded with a wicket when the dangerous Pillai smashed one to Reny at square leg, who took a county-standard catch. (He would later drop an almost-impossible chance off his own bowling, when he stopped what would have been a one-bounce four.) Both opening bowlers applied pressure and turned this into a match that we could now win if we held our nerve.
PBD, for some reason referred to as Dave in the scorebook, worked his magic and was rewarded with two wickets, while Garrett’s three wickets took him to 100 for Pacific. The last of his threesome was an impressive catch taken by Joe over his shoulder, reminiscent of the blinder he took last season against Stanford-Le-Hope. Reny also bowled well, taking one, while spin king Ahmed generated big turn and took a wicket thanks to a leg-side stumping by Amandeep, whose glove work was tidy throughout the innings.
But we could only get them eight down as Old Minch’s veteran draw specialist batted out in front of a crowd that now including Rahul, Jimbob, Theresa and little Leroy, who had turned up after hearing that an unlikely Pacific victory might be on the cards.
Jugs were bought by Toby for his run scoring, Timbob for reaching 100 “first-class” wickets for Pacific, and Eppy because he wanted a roll-up.
LEADING TEST RUN SCORERS OF ALL TIME
1, Sachin Tendulkar 15,921
2, Ricky Ponting 13,378
3, Jacques Kallis 13,289
4, Rahul Dravid 13,288
5, Alastair Cook 12,472
6, Kumar Sangakkara 12,400
7, Brian Lara 11,953
8, TOBY CHASSEAUD 11,923
9, Shivnarine Chanderpaul 11,867
10, Mahela Jayawardene 11,814
11, Allan Border 11,174
12, Steve Waugh 10,927
13, Sunil Gavaskar 10,122
14, Younis Khan 10,099
