Pacific CC stepped onto the field for our first NELCL game of the season against Stamford Hill. On what seemed to be a bit of a pudding of pitch the toss seemed to be an important one but, alas it didn’t fall our way and we were put into bat.

Jamie and Sid opened up and it was quickly apparent that the outfield wasn’t providing value for shots. The sticky outfield led to unfortunate early run out of Sid. Jamie and Seb were looking good with some particularly strong stroke play from Jamie.

In typical Pacific fashion one brought four in terms of wickets as Jamie, Seb, Dan and Luke fell in the space of 6 overs for 24 runs. Dan and Luke can consider themselves hard done by balls that rolled along the ground.

Faizal and Noor then began a patient rebuild, growing in tempo as they went along and put on 60 for the 6^th wicket, led by Faizal as the aggressor. Noor was bowled with 9 overs left and that unfortunately led to another PCC collapse as we lost our last 5 wickets for 21, pushing to get the score over 150. PCC were ultimately all out in the 38^th over setting Stamford Hill 147 to win.

Pacific took to the field feeling confident with the way the wicket had played but it got a bit easier as the sun beat down on it.

Toby and Noor took the new ball and Toby was excellent, bowling with good pace and accuracy picking up two wickets in two balls to put the pressure on the batting side. Wickets fell at regular intervals with Tim picking up one and a crucial run out by Dan.

Tim might have had a second if not for some comedy in the field, where the ball went up in the air with no one putting a name on it, Rowan took a brilliant catch only for Noor to run into him and boot the ball out of his hands.    

Dan bowled with great effort and from the other end Jack bowled a delightful spell of leg spin picking up two wickets, including a wicket maiden. Despite the regular fall of wickets Jabbar for Stamford Hill was rooted at one end and kept the scoreboard ticking over.

With run rate getting below 3, the only route to victory was to bowl them all out. Unfortunately for us they got over the line in the 36^th over with two wickets to spare.

A hearty performance, but ultimately, we were 20 runs short with the bat. However, the fielders backed the bowlers up brilliantly and Faizal took a cracking catch.