The Pacific squad travelled down to Hampton Wick to play Crossbats fearing another wasted journey as the rain lashed down and they were shorn of the captain (due to his child’s chicken pox).Â
However, the wicket was already in a wrecked state from previous use that morning and despite the showers we were cleared to play. Jon Webley stepped up to captain the side and promptly lost the toss and so we batted first.
Alex McKillop, who made 13, and Julian Levy proved to be yet another effective Aussie opening partnership as they took the game to the bowlers with some crunching cuts and pulls. After McKillop departed Rajaraman cameod with 9 from 4 balls before returning to the pavilion displaying a lump of mud on the face of his bat as a pretty valid excuse for an attempted hoik over midwicket failing.
Levy and Webley kept up the run rate although Webley was the beneficiary of a controversial not out decision. Levy eventually departed having made a superb 43 off 42 balls.Â
Tim Vanderpump came in and displayed a beautiful technique in supporting Webley as the weather improved.
 Webley hit a fine six down the ground before departing for 26. Chris Atkin looked in good nick but went for 7 leaving Vanderpump marshalling the tail. He progressed to a well made 40 off 55 balls but the last five batsmen only added three between them as Lawrence bowled superbly to take 5-10 off his seven overs.
Pacific were happy having set a challenging target of 150 and enjoyed a good tea. They knew they needed early wickets and two slip catches, off James Gleadow (2-23), were held in the first over to decapitate the Crossbats innings.
However, Spiro and Carter put on 64 to rebuild the innings as patchy bowling by Gleadow and Pascal allowed them off the hook. The skipper acted and brought himself and Atkin on and they both bowled well to bag two wickets each as wickets started to fall regularly although Crossbats did keep up with required run rate.
Webley then turned to the spinners to bowl at the death and Rajaraman (0-15) and Vanderpump (3-19) bowled containing spells whilst keeping the wickets coming.
The Crossbats tail had no real answer to the questions posed by our spinners.
Overall it was a good victory for Pacific by 27 runs on a quagmire of a pitch. Positives included good captaincy from Webley, a fine allround display from MOM Tim Vanderpump and a solid display from McKillop on his debut behind the stumps (one catch held and two half chances dropped). The concerns would be the 30 extras conceded and the limp display by the tail.
XI:- Jon Webley*, Chris Atkin, Matt Callender, John Hill, Mat Patel, Jai Rajaraman, Alex McKillop, Moses Hutchinson-Pascal, Tim Vanderpump, & Julian Levy+ & James Gleadow
