With the weather changing through the week and torrential over night rain the chances for today’s match going ahead seemed slim. However due to the work of Ramzan Mohammed the evening before ensuring that the covers were in tip top condition the wicket was bone dry and the breeze soon dried out the outfield.
Owing to a pitch clash with Alba F.A.’s training camp renting out a portion of the outfield, Hillhead’s 5th league game of the season against Motherwell was a delayed 1:30pm start and a reduced 40 over a side. Motherwell won the toss and elected to bowl first on the same wicket that we had played on the week before.
Jim Lindley-Dawe opened up with Krushnesh Patel and Patel fell in the 2nd over to a Jaffer of a delivery. 6/1. Shash Mazumder, returning from over a month out recovering from a broken finger looked like he had never been away. Aggressive when required, and respectful of the good ball himself and Lindley-Dawe made batting look easy.
Mazumder brought up his 50 with a lovely leg glance for 2 at the end of the 22 over. Unfortunately, his innings was brought to a close the over after, out LBW to A Pichaimuthu for 51 runs and a 117 run partnership with Lindley-Dawe came to an end.
As often in cricket one wicket can bring a tumble and this was what happened. Lindley-Dawe caught out at long off for 37, R. Butt out the ball after without troubling the scorers. All wickets falling to Pichaimuthu. Suddenly the score was 129/4.
Alex Hawley and Deil Patel batting #4 and #6 respectfully, stopped the rot and through clever cricket with aggressive running pushed the momentum back in Hillhead’s favour. Hawley fell for 14, 163/5 with 6.4 overs remaining.
Jared Bartlett joined D. Patel and in the next 4 overs put on 26 runs. D. Patel was eventually out bowled for a near run a ball 35. 189/6. There was a flurry of late wickets as the tail kept trying to whack it, but in the end Hillhead made it to 207/8 with Bartlett on a very well made 22*.
Hillhead 207/8 (40 overs)
S. Mazumder 51, J. Lindley-Dawe 37, D. Patel 35
A. Pichaimuthu 3/38, S. Thomas 3/40, A. Silvapicha 2/34
Following a well appreciated and enjoyable tea, the 1s welcomed back Gav Lynch and Agrim Jain to take over the duties of opening the bowling. Lynch bowled with real fizz and was unfortunate not to have K. Selvaraj (0) out 2nd ball caught behind, however it was adjudged to have been a bump ball. Not to worry though as he took out his off pole the ball after!
Jain at the other end was unplayable and beat the outside edge with ease. K. Prasad (6) got in in a carbon copy of Selvaraj – again his off stump getting knocked back by Lynch. Jain was finally rewarded for his toil snicking off D. Chinnasamy (5) and Jim Lindley-Dawe doing the rest. 27/3 after 10. Jain’s figures were 5 overs, 3 maidens 1 wicket for 7 runs!
Lindley-Dawe turned to his spin duo of Rayyan Butt and Jared Bartlett to quickly get through the overs, aware that the forecasted rain at 7pm could always make an earlier appearance and the requirement of 20 overs to be completed for DLS could come into it. Butt made the next breakthrough getting Narayansamy (15) caught and short fine leg by K. Patel. 62/4.
At 20 overs Motherwell were well behind the game at 67/4. Hillhead had quite amazingly bowled these overs in exactly 1 hour!
Hillhead started back up in the same manner as before, Lindley-Dawe using the plethora of bowling options at his disposal (8 different bowlers used in total.) Bartlett removed Palanismy (26) caught by S. Rutherford at point, 74/5, and he picked up his second wicket of the day trapping Fawad LBW for 3.
Kesh Soni picked up his first wicket of the day bowling A. Sambandam (2) and then with a quick piece of wicket keeping Lindley-Dawe managed to get S. Silvapicha (0) run out at the non strikers end. 105/8 off 30 overs.
With the rainclouds gathering behind Gartnavel hospital we knew the end was in sight, Pichaimuthu (46) batted well sending 6 balls to the boundary for four and one huge 6! He was eventually got LBW by S. Rutherford ending the Motherwell innings with Soni picking up the 9th and securing Hillheads 3rd win of the season.
Motherwell 136 a.o. (36 overs)
A. Pichaimuthu 46
K. Soni 2/13, G. Lynch 2/16, J. Bartlett 2/35
Hillhead welcome St. Michael’s to the Den next Saturday for the 3rd consecutive home game in a row.
Ballast was required to keep the flag down with the wind!
