Scorecard

Wormley II v Totteridge Millhillians Cricket Club 4th XI on Sat 03 Jul 2010 at 1:00pm
Totteridge Millhillians Cricket Club Won by 6 wickets

Match report TMIV v. Wormley II
03/07/2010
Played at Wormley

This corresponding fixture over the past two seasons had resulted in rain abandoned results with the 4s well set and so we were happy to be greeted with bright sunshine and minimal chance of precipitation this year. Again Chris lost the toss which meant bowling in the midday (1pm) heat again but happy in the knowledge of full bowling points should we knock them over.

Siva as is tradition, opened proceedings and was so excited about discovering a pitch with a generous helping of bounce that he was wided on height within the first over. Rohun Davda on debut in the 4s took an altogether more measured approach bowling his left arm swing nice and full on an excellent line. He could’ve had a caught behind early on but no dice from the umpire. Siva by this time was involved in a somewhat heated battle with Wormley’s opening batsman who seemed to have taken issue with him bowling short pitched deliveries now and again (bodyline this was not so not sure “what the beef” was to be honest), Siva almost had him caught at square leg with a diving Rakesh just getting his fingertips but no more to the ball. The bat claimed that this was in fact an excellent shot to “insert expletive” bowling, the sort of erudite comments we had to become accustomed to for the next ten overs or so before Steve did the decent thing and cleaned him up with a well directed yorker. Before this Siva had bowled the other opener off his pads after setting him up with an excellently directed bouncer. He then had their captain superbly caught in the gully by Neil “Bucket Hands” off one too close to cut but hit hard all the same. Rohun finished his tidy spell (6-1-14-0) and was replaced by Steve and Siva took a breather with Rakesh coming on briefly but not really finding his rhythm (as can be seen shortly he was saving himself for batting). Rahul then came on to bowl a bit of spin and immediately found a teasing length and pace. He was rewarded with two wickets with one caught in the covers by Krishan Chopra and a further caught by Dennison at backward point. Steve at the other end obtained the big wicket of their number 5 caught at midwicket off a low full toss by Krishan. As we celebrated this catch curiously one of the stumps ended up flat on the ground just after the batsman had walked past it, this may have given a slight indicator of events to follow but at the time we were pleased to be in amongst them with the score not too far along. Rahul finished an excellent spell with 8-2-26-2 to be replaced by Chris who picked up couple of quick wickets, the first caught by Steve round from slip and then a young guy who played really well for 31 before he got a little excited having just been fed a pie from Chris and not realising that the skipper occasionally actually lands one on the pitch, Steve doing the honours. The Chairman picked up his third wicket clean bowling their number 9. Last wicket in and a couple of sharp stumping chances could not be taken so Siva was brought back on to finish the job. Though the young number 11 bravely held out for an over or two he eventually chipped one up for Sanjay to snaffle running backwards over his head at short cover. Steve finished impressively with 19-8-44-3 and Siva with 10.3-3-34-3.

151 to win on an excellent deck and another fine effort in the field by all concerned. Little did we realise the fun and games that were about to ensue.....

Remember the number five who smoked the set of stumps having chipped one to midwicket? Well he was evidently the enforcer charged with wrecking TMs top order. Chris took a gamble and opened the batting with Siva on the grounds that the opposition were more angry at his perceived short ball assault than they would be on bowling sensibly. The plan worked well from one end as the slightly unhinged skin head tried to knock Siva’s head off first ball he faced (Siva safely negotiated this down to fine leg). Unfortunately at the other end no one had told the bowler to be equally as mental and he spoiled the party by pitching one on off stump and flummoxing Siva caught between defence and smite. He succeeded in chopping onto his stumps bringing in Sanjay (who sensibly had prepared himself well on the “off-chance” Siva’s downfall would come early). In truth this was the only time the opposition were seriously in the game as Chris and Sanjay started to knock the runs off at a healthy rate. Curiously the mad-cat bowler started to take issue with what he saw as “boring” tactics from TM’s skipper; boring being that Chris was trying not to get out to him chasing 151 in 50 odd overs. He graciously threw some abuse towards the skipper after his own miss-fielding resulted in a no-ball being smoked back at him for four. He rather fell apart after this first feigning to throw down the stumps (even though he was brisk enough for me to be batting well inside my crease), second time he did try to throw down the stumps/hit the batsman but succeeded in missing everything including his wicket keeper conceding overthrows. At this point the home captain rightly intervened informing him that he should not be trying to throw the ball at the opposition and that he was now being taken out of the attack. He did not like this one bit declaring that this action would have the inevitable consequence of losing the game as all the other bowlers were useless. He also stopped fielding altogether and hilariously rather than catch a chance that Chris offered up off a top edge stood their smoking a cigarette watching the ball drop at his feet. Not being one to turn down such gifts the partnership continued and got us up to 95-1 before the skipper departed mistiming a cut to backward point. Sanjay brought up an excellent 50 in this time as usual infuriating the opposition with his cross batted smears. Rakesh came in at 4 and upped the tempo deliciously off-driving anything on a length up and over the in field. His high point was a straight driven six into the sight-screen followed soon after by his low point calling Sanjay through for a second that was never really on running out Sanj for an excellent 51. Krishan went in at 5 charged with seeing things through but unfortunately got a little excited with the winning line in view and played all round a straight one. Abilhesh went in to finish things off and to calm Rakesh down who had seen another attempted six dropped at long-off. WIth no more scares we got home inside of 24 overs with a pretty comprehensive batting display following the excellent fielding. Fittingly the final runs were conceded by the errant fast bowler who allowed a four to run past him half-heartedly sticking out a leg rather than making any real attempt to stop the ball. Bizarre.


Wormley II Batting
151 for 10
Player name Runs
M.Spinks Bowled  S.Lyall 25
B.Stevenson Bowled  S.Sakthivel 10
K.Spinks Caught  S.Sakthivel (Dennison) 4
L.Haydan Caught  R.Bhatnagar (Chopra) 13
L.Pepper Caught  S.Lyall (Chopra) 18
G.Mount Caught  C.Benn (Lyall) 31
C.Jones Caught  R.Bhatnagar (Dennison) 13
A.Coombs Caught  C.Benn (Lyall) 9
R.Stevenson Bowled  S.Lyall 0
R.Wallace Not Out  0
A.Lapwood Caught  S.Sakthivel (Patnaik) 8

Totteridge Millhillians Cricket Club 4th XI Bowling

Player NameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Sivasankar Sakthivel10.3334311.333.24
Rohun Davda6.011400.002.33
Steve Lyall19.0844314.672.32
Rakesh Venugopal3.001100.003.67
Rahul Bhatnagar8.0226213.003.25
Chris Benn4.001628.004.00

Totteridge Millhillians Cricket Club 4th XI Batting
154 for 4
Player Name RunsCatchesStumpingsRun outs
Chris Benn Caught  30
Sivasankar Sakthivel Bowled  1
Sanjay Patnaik Run out  51 1
Rakesh Venugopal Not Out  55
Krishan Chopra Bowled  0 2
Abhilash Mathew Not Out  6
Vignesh Karthikeyan  
Neil Dennison   2
Rahul Bhatnagar  
Steve Lyall   2
Rohun Davda  

Wormley II Bowling

Player nameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
L.Pepper5.002100.004.20
R.Steveson7.0152152.007.43
A.Coombs3.012000.006.67
B.Stevenson4.1032132.007.68
K.Spinks4.0025125.006.25