A day that would be remembered more as the game that had to finish early to get in early for the Euro final game, at least for the PCC. A game we lost ,but was a pretty close game in the end .
We lost the toss and were put in to bat. We would have loved to bowl first , given the over cast conditions and grass on the pitch . It was indeed a big task for our openers given the seaming conditions . Kieran was the first to fall to a very full seaming delivery. Toby was our usual Mr dependable blocking and leaving the right deliveries and milking the straight deliveries for singles to start with . While Jas came in and played 2 solid looking shots for fours before falling to a seemingly seaming delivery that went through his defense gates. JD played a nice little innings of 21 runs which had a couple of lovely looking shots before what can only be explained as hard luck as JD sliced a very wide ball straight in to the hands of cover. Riz joined in and had a steadying partnership with Toby who was increasingly gaining in confidence with his cover drives and pulls . Riz was monumental in getting that run rate with some meaty blows whenever bowler erred in line or length .Riz , after a well made 41 fell victim to a leg break from the opposition captain. Colin -our next man in and who will now be known as the man who got jabbed in January , hit a very handsome looking 4 before falling victim to an LBW. While Toby kept the scoreboard ticking at the other end . Toby finally lost his wicket trying to get the run rate up in the last 10 overs. Randheer and Mutz came in towards the end to play a nice little cameo to get the score past our planned target of 230 .
We were confident to defend the score . Especially with our opening bowlers Jithin and Riz bowling very well. Jithin's line and length kept the batsmen contained while Riz's variations flummoxed the top 3 batsmen in their line up , and they were clean bowled . We were definitely on top at this stage , but little did we know that it was a "3 pawn gambit". Their 2 key batters (Ridley and Logg) walked out and took the game away from us . Intiallly with some strong defending and then some attacking shots . Both batsmen got to their 50s . We had a bit of hope when Logg got bowled out, well beaten by a flighted ball from Tim followed by another good one from Tim to get rid of the next bat cheaply. JD had a decent spell too keeping the run rate down and getting a wicket. Alas Ridley steadied the ship with the opposition captain to see them home with 2 overs to spare . But not before some last minute jitters from the opposition in the form of Ridley's wicket from well deserved Jithin . Questionable LBW decision possibly - one for Mutz's tiktok video to throw more light on ?
Match report by Reny
