Match Report
Highgate Irregulars Match Report
A Sunday game usually brings with it hope, anticipation, expectations, late arrivals and another chance to right all the wrongs of the games of the past that almost could have been.
Should have played straight, surely I won't get another double bounce ball on the stumps, I will connect well today , I'll get my fifty today or for the bowlers; today the catches will stick, today I will hit the correct length from ball one, today the edges will go to hand.
Instead the gods of cricket had other plans for us.
Having convincingly been beaten my a younger and better side in our mid week game, our appetite for a "second helping" of the same treatment was not what the doctor had ordered but the sight of the younger opposition arriving gave us pause for thought and we soon revisited our performance against the team in 2016. Scoring just below 160 in 35 overs which was easily chased down in 21 overs.
At a time like this there is always justification to revert to timed game as the format, allowing the team batting second to change the goal post should things not go your way.
However a timed game lifts the bowling restrictions and can hence subject the opposition to more than the allotted 7 overs per bowler, allowing a team not well balanced to hid behind the better players. With this reason playing heavily in the mind of our lesser experienced Captain, Yash opted for the shorter 35 overs to account for the expected rain and late start time from the scheduled 1 O'clock start.
2017 has been an interesting year for the HICCs, we started well winning our first few games by chasing down totals but then followed by a few losses on the trot due to our inability to chase down lowish targets. Unfortunately this turn of fortune has mainly been caused by poor shot selections by batsmen and uneven bounce in the recent wickets we have played on over the past few weeks causing us to fail chasing even modest targets of 148.
On the other hand our bowlers have seem to come into some rhythmic confidence giving us good starts and leading wicket taker Robert ( 11 wickets from 4 matches ) has been contributing every game by removing dangerous batsmen whenever he has been called upon. Tony seems to have flourished as an opening bowler with figures of 8 runs from 7 overs for 2 wickets, 6 runs from 5 overs for 1 wicket.
Today however even the weather gods decided to test our resolve, the sun was shining brightly on the us while we sweat it out in the heat all the while providing the batsmen with a dry outfield so that balls flew to the boundary, at least the wicket is true today, thought many of the HICCs players as the batsmen amounted 252 runs but with the tea break came rain !! and the outfield got slow all the while changing the wicket to a skiddy runway with the odd low bounce.
This being a match report maybe I should write something about what happened during the match but instead I can tell you what did not happen; the oppo were not a lively old bunch of delusional cricketers ; our captain did not win the toss; we did not hold on to 5 catches including one of the batsman that went on to post 100+; we did not reduce their total by 35 runs by keep extras to a minimum of 0. We did not take our youth pills so that the averages ages of the two teams would match up evenly, and lastly we did try and physically injure their best batsmen with the spikes on our shoes.. no wait .. never mind.
So all in all a day with more wrongs than right which shall be soon left behind to gather dust on the stats shelves of the World Wide Web
