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This game, away to our longest standing rivals, Abdul Aziz, was a bit like the weather, bright and sunny one moment, dire and stormy the next.
They won the toss and put us in to bat with the weather suddenly bright and sunny. Danish started off in a hurry (unusual that!) and swept the first ball, a full one from John Leonard, to the boundary for four. The Barn Elms pitch was showing the effects of the rainy weather with some eccentric bounce, but nothing veterans of the last games at Haydons Road couldn’t handle (or so we thought). Danish, ably supported by some lusty hits from Chris Lewis, raced the total along to 20 without loss after four overs. Things were looking deceptively good, as they often do with the Presidents, but with the ball coming through slowly off the pitch and a soft outfield, further boundaries were few and far between. Then Chris played too early to one from Leonard and was caught for 8 with the score on 21, and I was next in. I skilfully managed to spend as much time as possible at the non-striker’s end as Danish took the score on briskly until one that hardly bounced struck him low on the back leg, and umpire Thorogood had no hesitation in sending him back to the pavilion, out for a quick-fire 19, with the total on 36.
No need to worry: a solid start, me and Khalid at the crease and lots of strong batting to come. Although intending to give Khalid as much of the strike as possible, I ended up hogging the bowling for the next three overs. My score steadily climbed to an all time high for the season of four when, in desperation, they brought on Eric Lavers to bowl. I swiped wildly at two successive full tosses from Eric. A combination of a slow outfield and my atrocious timing meant that they each only went for two. Still Khalid languished at the non-strikers end: in for three overs and not yet faced a ball. My next ball from Eric, a straighter full toss, caught me two minds – whether to block or try and smash the ball back over the bowler’s head. I settled for an elegant compromise and spooned a gentle catch straight back to the bowler – out for 8, and I couldn’t even blame the pitch this time.
Khalid remained a spectator while Tanzeel knocked off a couple of runs from the next two overs. When finally let loose on the bowling, Khalid hit a quick fire 8 runs before holing out to mid-off to a ball that took forever to come through. With the score at 50 for 4 off 12 overs, things were starting to look as grim as the weather now was.
Things looked even grimmer when Tanzeel fell for 7 and Chalie I’Anson was bowled by Jones without scoring. Having scored 21 before losing a wicket, we were now 58 for 6 with only fifteen overs gone. This game was following a very familiar pattern … As the skies darkened and it began to drizzle, the Presidents’ hopes rested on Praba and Ravi.
Spectators gasped in horror as Praba called for a two, but somehow Ravi made it home before the ball arrived. Encouraged by Ravi’s athleticism, Praba hit the very next ball into mid wicket and immediately called for another two! Was this going to be a heart attack, or just a run out? The spectators held their collective breath. Some miraculously inept fielding enabled Ravi to make his ground again. Howls of protest came, not from Ravi, who did not have enough breath left, but from all of us on the boundary. The running between wickets took on a more appropriately sedate pace, and the two batsmen kept the scoreboard ticking over steadily. Praba did not let some energetic and optimistic appealing get to him as he started putting in some big hits.
Tanzeel and Khalid were now abandoned out in the middle as umpires because none of us fancied going out into what was now steady rain. Tanzeel responded to some spirited sledging by taking an ever stricter interpretation of what constituted a wide. Eric Lavers, who had managed to adjust his length sufficiently to allow the ball to bounce occasionally, was still having a few problems with his line and was becoming a serious contributor to the extras column. This perceived injustice tended to upset his normally sunny disposition.
By the time Ravi was bowled for 13 by the excellent Ahmed in the 25th over, the score was 101 for 7, our position a lot healthier. Still, we had 10 overs to go and only three wickets in hand. Informed opinion on the boundary was that a score of 150 would be defendable on this pitch. Despite a long absence from the game, Andrew Swan showed great batting form and helped take the score on to 128 for 8 before he was bowled for 10 in over 31. Will Thorogood then repeated his heroics of the previous weeks, and by the time Praba was bowled by Jones just three short of what would have been a thoroughly deserved half century, we were 143 for 9 with just under two overs to go. Christian hit a confident four not out and we batted out our allotted 35 overs to reach 148 with a wicket in hand.
The Abduls trooped off muttering about the unfairness of the umpiring of wides: there were dark warnings of what we could expect when it was their turn.
As it happened, Khalid and Danish opened with immaculate spells of fast and hostile bowling that were so accurate that there was no scope for poetic licence on the part of the umpires. Only one ball in the first six overs could by any stretch of the imagination be called wide, and it duly was. But several good lbw shouts went unheeded, and suspicions started to form, unspoken at first, that their threats were indeed being carried out. In the meantime, opening bats Canadian Craig Smillie and Aussie Greg Rowlands were dealing admirably with the excellent bowling, and pushing the score slowly but steadily along. Then an amazing direct hit from mid-off by Charlie I'Anson (who fielded wonderfully all day) stunned everyone including batsman Smillie who still had his bat in the air as the wickets went flying. He immediately grounded his bat, but he was definitely out, or so we thought. The umpire thought differently – not out. We took this as proof that the Abduls were carrying out their tea-time threats, but in retrospect, a more likely explanation is simply incompetence, for the umpire had not moved from his position behind the stumps and so could not watch the ball being thrown in from behind him.
The very next over, Smillie skied a thick edge off Khalid into the no man’s land between silly mid-on, where I was, and deep mid-wicket, where Andrew was. Keeping my eye firmly on the ball as I ran back, I was stunned to hear a shout of “My ball!” in my right ear, just as the ball was on final approach. “Bugger that,” I thought and managed to get my hands on the ball just as we collided, providing a live demonstration of all of Newton’s laws of physics as we went flying in various directions. Somehow the ball stuck, in marked contrast to the previous week when I missed a sitter. Maybe it will help my catching if there is always someone to run into at the crucial moment.
It began to look like the whole team (and not just Andrew and me) were on a roll as Greg Rowlands was caught behind by Chris off Danish in the very next over – 20 for 2 off six overs. But the vice-like grip that we had on the batsmen first loosened and then evaporated. Andrew came on to bowl. Rusty after over a year since he last bowled, stiff after a morning’s hard physical work and his exertions with the bat, and having just been flattened in the collision with me, he found it hard to get into any sort of rhythm and the batsmen took full advantage. Let off the leash Schwarz and Doyle started hitting everyone around the park, finding the boundaries with ease as they put on 90 runs off the next 13 overs without any further loss of wickets in spite of what the bowlers felt were several good lbw shouts (is there any bowler alive who is not convinced that every lbw shout is a good one, and that every umpire is either blind or a cheat, or both?). At 108 for 2 off 19 overs the match was not so much drifting away from us as disappearing over the horizon. Our perception of injustice simmered as the unpalatable prospect of suffering our first defeat of the season to our fiercest rivals loomed ever larger.
Eric Lavers came on to umpire at the end Tanzeel was bowling. Inevitably he called a wide – harsh but probably correct. The next ball, the last of the over, was right on middle stump. Tanzeel enquired in his usual subdued fashion whether umpire Lavers might consider that a wide too. Umpire Lavers signalled his disagreement with that proposition by throwing the bowler’s cap to the ground and informing the bowler in far more succinct language that he intended to inflict serious bodily harm upon his person.
Most of the Presidents then walked off the field in protest at this most un-umpirely conduct, with Ravi, particularly incensed at the total lack of lbw decisions, getting into his car and preparing to drive off. Tempers cooled after a break of about twenty minutes, and what proved to be the turning point in the game came when we persuaded Ravi to get out of his car and return to the field.
When play resumed, Praba first removed Doyle, caught by Danish for 61, and then bowled Ahmed for 3. Was it possible? With Abdul Aziz needing only 34 runs off 14 overs, and with 6 wickets in hand, it was a long shot, and Praba’s knee was giving him trouble.
But heads started coming up, shoulders straightening.
Then Ravi took his first wicket – Haines LBW (!!!) for 5. Khalid removed Doyle for 30 and next over Ravi bowled Parry for a duck. The high fives were now raining down on the bowlers. The next ball Jones, who hails from Melbourne and has often been the scourge of the Presidents’ bowlers, hit a thick top edge which fell gently into the hands of mid-on and stalked off, reportedly under the impression that he had been bid farewell by one of our fielders in a manner worthy of the Australian test team, but possibly out of place in Barn Elms. More high fives.
Ravi on a hat trick, and Abdul Aziz tottering on 120 for 8! Eric Lavers strode to the crease amid total silence. He survived the hat trick ball, got a couple of runs, only to get a ball from Praba that took out his middle stump and sent the bails almost to the boundary. With 22 runs to get and seven overs still to go, the last pair of Burrows and Leonard was at the crease. Vociferous appeals for anything that struck a pad only served to blacken the mood of the batsmen, but Tanzeel, having had a reasonable lbw shout (at least, I thought it was reasonable) turned down, bowled Burrows with his next ball and the Presidents had won a remarkable victory by 19 runs, having taken the last 8 wickets for 17 runs in ten overs.
A wonderful, roller-coaster of a contest, with a great rescue act from Praba, and some excellent bowling from the Presidents matched by wonderful batting from the Abdul Aziz top order, but marred by over-reaction on both sides.
Mike Edwards |