On a fine Saturday afternoon, a somewhat makeshift XI assembled at Millfields for Pacific's next league game against a new opposition to the league, Bright CC. Upon inspection of the wicket, it was deemed that it would definitely favour the bowlers but there was some pure village before a ball was bowled as there were two tosses: the first one to decide on whether the boundaries were brought in closer (which they were) and then a second toss was won by stand-in captain Ben Burnham, who elected to bowl.

Hishaam and Pacific debutant, Habib, opened up and stifled the run rate with some tight bowling, making the pitch do the talking with some balls keeping low and testing the footwork and defence of the openers whilst some popped up testing Burnham behind the stumps, who has really impressed behind the stumps, keeping on some absolute minefields. After Habib bowled his allotted two beamers (per over, apparently, according to the umpire), he pinned the opener lbw before making it 2 in 2 with a well-bowled slower ball that was edged to Burnham. Hishaam grabbed a wicket himself, inducing a loose shot hitting a wide ball into the hands of Humphrey at cover.

Humphrey & Chai replaced the opening bowlers and bowled well in tandem, complimenting each other nicely. Humphrey managed to get his first wicket when their resident biffer, took him on hitting the ball to long-off where Matt from Palm Tree, who was kindly helping us out, took an assured grab inches inside the boundary. Humphrey & Chai then proceeded to run through the rest of the Bright line-up with Humphrey finishing with 4 wickets, including ending the stubborn vigil of the opener who scored 9 of 62 balls, and Chai ripping it to finish with 3 wickets as Bright were bowled out for 85. Generally speaking, a target of 86 would be an easy chase. However, given how the pitch was playing, this was a target to be taken for granted.

And this is something that BOC can attest to as sadly he was trapped lbw by their wily left-arm opening bowler who bowled a half-tracker which hit BOC on the foot as he attempted to pull a ball that kept low ... and that is an understatement. Amandeep came and went soon after, nicking to slip in something that slightly resembled proper cricket. Faisal came in at 4 and hit a few boundaries, one with his favoured sweep shot and Matt, who opened, was batting very resolutely, keeping out the good balls and punishing the bad ones. Faisal was cleaned up by the left-arm bowler allowing Dhruv to come in at 5. At this point, captain Burnham who was due to go in at 6, asked Humphrey if he fancied going in at 6 instead. Dhruv was then run out by a fantastic piece of fielding from the wicketkeeper who ran to a ball tucked to the legside, with the speed of light, before removing his glove and throwing down the stumps with a direct hit. Pacific were 30-4 at this point.

Humphrey joined Matt and put on a 49-run partnership which steadied the ship and broke the back of the target and whilst it was a relatively small target, the pitch was not getting any better and the bowling was very accurate so good running between the wickets was essential and any loose balls needed to be punished with Humphrey clipping balls on the pads for 4 and Matt rocking back and sweep-pulling slightly shorter balls from the spinner. After drinks, Matt played the shot of the day with a technically perfect cover drive for 4. When it looked for all money that these two were going to see the team home, Matt was undone by a mixture of clever bowling and the pitch as a slower ball, which was back of a length, went under the attempted pull shot hitting the stumps as Matt walked off having made an impressive 30, which would've been worth at least double on a good deck.

Hishaam came in and put the icing on the cake hitting the winning runs for 4 over square leg and securing a 5-wicket victory and many drinks were consumed at the Princess of Wales afterwards, including a few extra drinks for Matt, who coincidentally was to turn out against Pacific the following day. All in all, a hard-fought but well-earned league win, given the difficulty of the conditions. A big shoutout to the people who made their Pacific debuts, the people who filled in last-minute and to Mendel, who received a big TFC!