Hornsey Cricket Club 1st Team v Hampstead on Sun 08 Jun 2008 at 13:00
Hornsey Cricket Club Lost
Hornsey v Hampstead - Cockspur Cup 3rd Round (Sunday June 8th)
Hampstead won by 111 runs
Hampstead 272-5 (45 overs; Martin Tucker 2-40, Joel Gregory 2-48)
Hornsey 163 all out (38.1 overs; Garfield Struthers 40)
On a magnificent Sunday afternoon and in front of the biggest crowd that Tivoli Road's seen for years (you know it's a social occasion when Tubby turns up) Chet won the toss and elected to insert our Premier League opposition. We got off to a dream start with the very first ball of the game, as Joel Gregory bowled their opening batsman for a golden duck. We maintained our intensity throughout the first ten overs and at the start of the tenth over Hampstead were rocking on 39-3 - Marty had bowled their other opener and their number three, who looked like he was about to start hitting big runs, smacked Joel to Chet at mid off. Enter a fresh fourth wicket partnership of Shaun Levy (Middlesex staff player) and Paul Weekes (former Middlesex stalwart, and indeed former Hornsey player). With their two key batsmen new to the wicket it was crucial that we kept them in check and removed at least one of them quickly.
Although we had some initial success in the first objective they played themselves in and by the half-way mark they were already cutting loose. By the time Will Davis bowled Weekes, in the 34th over, they had made a 141 partnership and Hampstead were starting to pull out of sight. The bowling performance did lag in the second half of the innings, not least because of the highly disappointing 33 wides we conceded. Not only is that gifting 33 runs to the opposition, it's also tiring out your side during a long session in the field whilst offering five and a half extra overs to a prime batting side. My fellow scorer commented that had Screens not put in an excellent keeping performance many of those wides could have gone to the boundary and cost us even more. Hampstead galloped away to a total of 272, with Levy on an unbeaten 90 and their number 7 batsman crashing a Klusener-esque 43 off 23 balls.
Surmounting that total was always going to be a steep task, which made it all the more disappointing that Duncan was sawn off having made a promising start including several cleanly struck boundaries. Screens followed very shortly and we found ourselves at 17-2. We showed some resolve in the middle order, and although we were always behind the projected run rate our fourth wicket partnership of Garfield and Zarig were keeping us in touch with some good running and sweet strokes until Zarig got another controversial decision and went for 28. When Garfield fell for a strong 40 our chances had effectively disappeared with the score on 118-5. Hampstead's phalanx of spinners proceeded to pull us further down into the mire and although Chet manned the barricades with a stout 25 (he must be in his best batting form for a few seasons) the game was long gone by the time they polished us off for 163.
Nobody could dispute that Hampstead were the superior side but the final totals don't reflect a performance where we kept them honest for a long period of the game and had them in trouble early on. It's instructive to compare the sides' respective scores after the halfway mark of 22 overs; Hampstead were 98-3 whilst we were 88-3. In both innings we competed well to begin with but found ourselves unable to sustain the challenge. Nevertheless, in contrast to Saturday's wretched result, we reminded ourselves of what we're capable of against far stronger opposition.
Author Johnny Marr
Hampstead Batting
272 for 5
| Patel |
0 |
Bowled |
| Headley |
7 |
Bowled |
| Akhtar |
20 |
Caught |
| Levy |
90 |
Not Out |
| Weekes |
57 |
Bowled |
| Mohammed |
11 |
Bowled |
| Sharma |
43 |
Not Out |
| Cotterell |
|
|
| Thomas |
|
|
| Khan |
|
|
| Sharma |
|
|
Hornsey Cricket Club 1st Team Bowling
Hornsey Cricket Club 1st Team Batting
163 for 10
Hampstead Bowling
| Khan |
9.0 |
0 |
30 |
1 |
30.00 |
3.33 |
| Thomas |
5.0 |
0 |
16 |
2 |
8.00 |
3.20 |
| Patel |
8.0 |
0 |
41 |
2 |
20.50 |
5.13 |
| Akhtar |
8.0 |
0 |
30 |
2 |
15.00 |
3.75 |
| Weekes |
3.0 |
0 |
14 |
0 |
0.00 |
4.67 |
| Sharma |
3.0 |
0 |
17 |
2 |
8.50 |
5.67 |
| Sharma |
2.2 |
0 |
11 |
1 |
11.00 |
4.71 |