MAtch Report: 2019-06-02, GSNDS vs Chatswood West

So, the 11ths are still winless after 3 rounds, but we at least had a bit of a crack.

Having been forewarned the previous night that the opposition would be short, when they emailed literally every captain in all of winter comp to that effect, it was clearly going to be a very good toss to win. Naturally, they did, and elected to bat. Hirak and Ali opened with plenty of pace, but the Chatswood openers simply used that pace to have the ball rocketing to the boundary from the outset. We didn’t take a wicket until the 15th over, and shortly after that, their reinforcements arrived, meaning they were going to be able to both bat and bowl with a full complement. One of their reinforcements was a skinny looking kid who looked terrible, but sure did hit some glorious sixes. In the end, we were probably a bowler or two short, and after a lot of chasing leather, 233 was the damage. The absolute bright spark of the innings was Rob’s amazing 6 over spell of 1/6. Sure did put the other 227 runs off 30 overs into somewhat sharp relief.

So not an impossible task with the bat on the lightning quick MP1 outfield, but certainly not an easy one. It’s an ill wind that blows no one any good, and while the farmers hate it, gee the drought allows for some pretty cheap runs when there are only 7 fielders. We started ok and Charlie and Kunal found the boundary a few times, but it was really Rob that got us going, adding a 40 to his bowling achievements. Chatswood kept us in the game with some dropped catches, and inexplicably feeding of my one and only shot for no good reason.

With two in the shed, Christian and Mishal really hit out, the former with some awesome sweep shots on his way to 39. Once they dropped almost all their fielders back, it was frankly a pretty good effort to keep the required run rate below 10 for most of the innings. Rob fell to an amazingly slow ball on his return, leaving us needing 48 off 29 balls for victory. I did my best, but frankly, the fitness and strength just weren’t there to find the boundary often enough, and we ended up on 220 all out from the final ball.

So in the end we lost by 13. Still, at least we weren’t World Cup semi-finalists from four years ago and currently 3rd ranked ODI team losing to the 7th ranked team, in circumstances that would have us teetering perilously on the edge of missing the finals altogether. Although, actually, the whole teetering thing is probably not wrong. The 11ths will need some very strong performances to be playing come August at this rate.

Scorecard