Triplets Terrorise Town

So much to look forward to in this clash of 1st v 2nd in the Watford sports complex - TMCC Bilawal Sheikh in the opposition, the return of Rambo (Arun Ramachandran) - but the big story which emerged was the mega-collapse engineered by our three spinners (well, two plus Eklavya) on a dry and deteriorating track.

Watford, with what was unquestionably the best seam attack we have faced all season, understandably given the overcast conditions, opted to bowl on winning the toss. The highlights were Ahsan's clean hitting, a welcome return to form at no.3 - Simon's driving, and Gayan's nous. Ahsan made 31, Simon 21, and Gayan was left not out on 26 when the tail was cleaned up by Bill. With a couple of cameos chucked in we made it up to 118, and we viewed that as disappointing, and probably not enough.

Those thoughts looked more and more logical as the seamers, Gayan and Indika, couldn't extract much from the dry track although Indy managed to nip out an opener, helped by a smart catch from Tom 'Rosie' Rose. At 46-1, progress looked fairly calm and solid - though this was very much the calmness before the storm and the solidity before the collapse. Eklavya had taken the new ball and as with last week, was keeping it extremely tight, which helped create just a little bit of pressure. The advent of Rambo and Nikeal, with the three spinners juggled, ramped up that pressure and things began to happen very very quickly - the fall of wickets was -

59-3; 61-4; 66-5; 67-6; 68-7; 68-8; 72-9; 72 all out.

Rambo and Nikeal turned it miles, and once they had controlled that turn and landed it in the right areas the Town batsmen had no answer at all. X's control gave them no respite, and backed up by some superb catching - step forward Simon, Nikeal, Thiru and Ahsan - in a trice the tail was in and then the tail was out as the old strategy of full and straight, attacking the stumps, cleaned 'em up.

Between them the three amigos returned figures of 19.1-3-36-9, Eklavya 3-12, Arun 2-16, Nikeal 4-8. What a turnaround this was - grabbing the chance to do something really special after an unpromising start and power the Threes to the top of the league!