Scorecard

Totteridge Millhillians Cricket Club 4th XI v Northchurch II on Sat 19 May 2012 at 1.00
Match was Drawn

Match report So very, very close. A couple of times last season the 4s experienced the most bittersweet experience of a nine wickets draw and we can all confirm that the feeling doesn’t improve. Chris won another toss (a habit he is trying to get rid of) and again chose to bat after having a look at the pretty flat looking wicket with some green on it.

Sergeant Slaughter / Lead Counsel Jezza Graves and Phil took the openers jobs and batted very becalmed for the opening 12 overs before Phil had his furniture rearranged by the oppositions stand out bowler. Gravesy anchored the innings splendidly as he always seems to do for the 4s and batted right through to the 43rd over scoring 62 increasing his pace as one should from sedentary to frenetic by the end. PK's early-season good form continued with 46 before he lost his concentration and was cleaned up. PK may have decided to retire himself out anyway as he was being constantly shouted at by Drill Sergeant Graves to push for three when he had barely completed his first run. Ketan entered the fray at this point and took a liking to the pitches low bounce using his heavy mace to hit over the infield before he was struck by the commentators curse coming from Phil who declared that the slips were far too deep to catch anything coming off the bat followed by next ball by Ket being caught in the slips. Dani the new addition to the 4s was looking promising on his debut before a mixup resulted in him being run out. Kam and Veera were tasked with seeing the last five overs out and getting as many batting points in the process. Veera having declared himself the teams all-rounder last week despite the fact that his batting average did not exceed his bowling average (a paltry 4.20) played a proper IPL knock going in in the 48th over and scoring 28 not out (4,4,4,4,6,4,2) the six being a monstrous pickup deposited over mid-wicket. At the start of the final over of our innings we were looking at the two runs to get us up to 185 but ended up with 21 getting us the full batting points finishing on 204. Kam played a more somnolent but important supporting role finishing on 8*.

The first three wickets that we took off the opposition appeared to be a worst wicket competition started by Roger who managed to convince the batsmen to go for one of the widest deliveries he's bowled in a long time ballooning a catch to Gravesy at cover. Chris hung his head in shame after Veera's excellent catch at deep square leg from a rank full bunger. Jeeza managed to land one in his own half taking all of the pace of the ball only to watch the batsmen mistiming a pull shot which bounced into the ground off an under-edge and loop up onto his own stumps. Nevertheless they all went down in the book and the door had been prized open. Gravesy and Veera were bowling with the new cherry and once again Veera showed himself to be a class act picking up a 4-fer clean bowling three of the batsman and getting a fine edge through to the keeper from the star bowler who also turned out to be the star bat. Gravesy also located excellent line and length and was rewarded with a “proper” wicket clipping the top of off with one he pitched up. The wickets were falling regularly but as we got into the lower order it was clear that the overs remaining would play a part at some point. Dani replaced Gravesy for a bit of twirl and managed to clean bowl the left handed skipper who had dug in. That left 1 wicket from the last 4 overs with an experienced bat at one end look to monopolise the strike and a greenhorn youngster at the other end who had come out to bat without a box (a sign of confidence or bad planning?). Clearly we wanted to be bowling at the later but a combination of good marshaling of the strike and lax fielding meant that we didn’t get enough balls at the number 11. Veera being our most potent bowler responded to his captains request and manfully kept his spell going much longer than he would have liked and was attacking the stumps until the last but with no shots being played there was no way through.

Our 204-5 tells you that this was a fairly moribund pitch and so it was a good effort to take the nine wickets that we did but as always in a game like that you walk away thinking what if...

Totteridge Millhillians Cricket Club 4th XI Batting
Player Name RunsMB4s6sSRCtStRo
extras
TOTAL :
7w  
for 5 wickets
7
204
(53.0 overs)		    
Jeremy Graves ct  J.McCarron 62 1
Philip Ridout b  J.McCarron 6
Prakash Kannan b  J.Selfe 46
Ketan Shah ct  J.McCarron 37 1
Dani Nadeem Run out  10
Kamlesh Bharadia Not Out  8
Veerapandiyan Rengasamy Not Out  28 1
Andrew Shoreman  
Chris Benn  
Roger Luck  
Waqas Memon  

Northchurch II Bowling

Player nameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
O.Johnson13.035000.003.85
J.McCarron19.0167322.333.53
A.Bremnath6.031100.001.83
J.Selfe7.0229129.004.14
L.Michalski5.012500.005.00
J.Fantham3.002200.007.33

Northchurch II Batting
Player name RMB4s6sSR
extras
TOTAL :
1nb 11w 9b  
for 9 wickets
21
124 (47.0 overs)		     
C.Suckling ct  C.Benn (V.Rengasamy) 22
A.Menger ct  R.Luck (J.Graves) 4
J.McCarron ct  V.Rengasamy (K.Shah) 43
M.Suckling b  J.Graves 11
J.Selfe b  V.Rengasamy 1
O.Johnson b  J.Graves 0
J.Fatham b  V.Rengasamy 0
A.Bremnath b  D.Nadeem 7
L.Michalski b  V.Rengasamy 7
Debenham Not Out  6
S.Wiggins Not Out  2

Totteridge Millhillians Cricket Club 4th XI Bowling

Player NameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Waqas Memon6.022300.003.83
Roger Luck9.0124124.002.67
Chris Benn4.0110110.002.50
Jeremy Graves10.0125212.502.50
Veerapandiyan Rengasamy14.072345.751.64
Dani Nadeem4.0010110.002.50