Report by Fingers
After the tour last week it was the very short visit to Englefield and after the very long boundaries at Portsmouth it was the very short ones even at the extended Englefield ground.
James won the toss and with the pitch looking like it had some dampness in it unsurprisingly elected to bowl. Bob and Os opened the bowling and Nilam was soon in to his stride as he had been in the fixture last year. A century partnership for the first wicket was eventually broken by Dicko when he had van der Merwe leg before.
This brought to the crease Ernest Thakurdas who joined Nilam in enjoying the short boundaries on offer. They took the score past 200 as Nilam went past his hundred and Thakurdas past his fifty. They both went in quick succession to excellent catches by James in the deep near the end of the innings and as a result the score was kept below 250.
This was still a tough ask and was made tougher by the opening spell from Akram. He nipped one back to have Hammad leg before and then bowling round the wicket pitched one on off and hit the top of off stump to remove Dopey. Sunil and Spike followed also to Akram and we were looking like we would struggle to make a decent total.
Fortunately James was still there and looking fluent and Os joined him in a partnership that took us to respectability. Just as they were threatening to challenge the total Os was run out but fortunately Matt was able to join James in keeping the innings going.
James was in the best form he has shown so far this season and brought up his tenth hundred for the club (and third against Englefield) as he closes in on 10,000 runs. We were also getting to the point where we could contemplate winning the game but in reality this depended on James seeing it through to the end.
Matt became the second of three run outs but we were still on target. Things changed when James was finally dismissed for 127 with about thirty still needed. All of a sudden the boundaries dried up and by the time we got to the last over 15 were needed to win which proved beyond us and we fell seven runs short of the Englefield total.
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