Theale & Tilehurst 1st XI vs Swindon NALGO 5th May 2007

Report by Fingers

The start of another league season and the (relatively) long away trip to Swindon.

Cat lost the toss which was much to his relief as he was unsure what to do; Swindon put us in to bat and Cat himself and Micky opened up for T&T. On a, understandably, very dry pitch the new ball had the odd trick up its sleeve and after 47 had been put on for the first wicket Micky was the first to go when he mistimed a pull shot to midwicket when the ball stayed in the pitch.

Cullam soon followed before Cat and Wiggy steadied the ship with a partnership of 36. After they both went in quick succession Sunil and Jamil put on the best partnership of the day and it looked like we were on our way to a score of 220 or above. However, the last ten overs went very much against what we had hoped. Both Jamil and Sunil went looking to increase the rate and then Osman demonstrated what we had been telling all the newbies in the team; that being that he is a suicidal runner between the wickets.

The lower order fell away quickly and as well as not getting near the total we had hoped we also failed to bat out 45 overs, donating three extra overs to Swindon. Was this going to come back and haunt us later on?

The early part of the Swindon innings followed a similar pattern to ours; a decent first wicket stand and then wickets in clusters. Cullam accounted for S Zafar when he gloved one down the leg side and in the next over Doc had Khan lbw.

F Zafar came out and played like he didn’t have long and this was perhaps demonstrated by him getting cramp soon after arriving at the crease. After some big shots he finally top edged a sweep to Cullam at deep square leg. However, his replacement at the crease continued in the same vein hitting his first ball massively over long on for six.

At 165-6 Swindon seemed to be sitting pretty and it seemed the extra overs would allow them to coast to victory without the pressure of maintaining a high run rate. However, Cullam came back and bowled the aggressive Hussain and then it was over to Osman. With nine runs needed he produced three consecutive wicket maidens, taking a wicket with the last ball of each over. The first was an excellent low caught and bowled, the second a well taken catch above his head by Cat at extra cover and finally the plumbest of plumb lbws to wrap up the victory. A wicket that was worth 26 points and gave us a maximum 35 points to start off the season. As it happened the extra overs hadn’t cost us; in fact they may have helped us as we took the final wicket with the last ball of the 46th over. Not a tactic to pursue over the long term though.

Whilst we just shaded this game we are likely to need to play better in the weeks to come if we are going to win further matches.

THEALE AND TILEHURST CC SCORECARD
Home Team		Swindon NALGO						Away Team		Theale and Tilehurst
Date of Match		5th May 2007						Played at		Swindon

		Team							Result	Team
Result		Theale and Tilehurst							beat	Swindon NALGO

1st Innings of		Theale and Tilehurst
	Name	How Out			Who			Bowler		4's	6's	Score
1	P Stephens	ct			P Penfold			A Habib		8	1	42
2	M Mehta	ct			N Ali Khan			U Sahar		2	0	11
3	C Smith	ct			-			U Sahar		1	0	5
4	A Wigmore	lbw						A Das		1	0	17
5	S Kumar	bowled						U Sahar		4	0	23
6	M Jamil	bowled						A Das		9	0	50
7	S Bond	bowled						L Hussain		0	0	4
8	O Mahmood	run out								0	0	1
9	Neill Halliday	bowled						A Das		0	0	0
10	B Cooper	bowled						A Das		0	0	0
11	P Jenkins	not out								0	0	0
							Byes	5
							Leg Byes	3
							Wides	24
							No Balls	1
									Extras			33

							Wickets	10	Total			186

Bowling			O	M	R	W
1	N Ali Khan		5	2	15	0
2	L Hussain		9	0	31	1
3	U Sahar		11	1	62	3
4	A Das		12	2	35	4
5	A Habib		5	0	33	1
6
7
8

Fall of Wicket
	Score	Outgoing Bat				Stand of
1	47	2				47
2	62	3				15
3	98	1				36
4	104	4				6
5	161	5				57
6	184	6				23
7	185	8				1
8	185	9				0
9	185	7				0
10	186	10				1




2nd Innings of		Swindon NALGO
	Name	How Out			Who			Bowler		4's	6's	Score
1	S Khan	lbw						Neill Halliday				13
2	S Zafar	ct			P Jenkins			C Smith				32
3	A Das	bowled						Neill Halliday				1
4	F Zafar	ct			C Smith			B Cooper				37
5	R Taylor	ct			B Cooper			M Jamil				7
6	I Dastagar	ct			Neill Halliday			S Bond				23
7	l Hussain	bowled						C Smith				31
8	N Ali Khan	ct			P Stephens			O Mahmood				16
9	U Sahar	ct & b						O Mahmood				2
10	P Penfold	not out										6
11	A Habib	lbw						O Mahmood				0
							Byes	0
							Leg Byes	1
							Wides	15
							No Balls	1
									Extras			17

							Wickets	10	Total			185

Bowling			O	M	R	W
1	C Smith		14	2	38	2
2	Neill Halliday		9	2	40	2
3	M Jamil		7	1	30	1
4	B Cooper		3	0	27	1
5	S Bond		6	2	20	1
6	A Wigmore		2	0	18	0
7	O Mahmood		5	3	12	3
8

Fall of Wicket
	Score	Outgoing Bat				Stand of
1	47	2				47
2	47	1				0
3	61	3				14
4	106	4				45
5	118	5				12
6	124	6				6
7	165	7				41
8	178	9				13
9	181	8				3
10	185	11				4