Cavendish Cricket Club

We lost the toss and were sent into the field last night with a spring in our step and a shiny cherry. JB and Damo started us off well, and were unlucky not that a few early chances just didn’t go their way. We then turned to Ed and Brett, who toiled hard but couldn’t break through, and the bad guys started to put their foot on the accelerator. To our considerable credit, our ground fielding standard remained high during this time, and Engineering would have been disappointed not to capitalise in the final three overs, when Dadhichi and Thomas bowled a tight line and length to dismiss both openers in quick succession. They ended on 4/188 after their allotted 20 overs — a high total with a relatively soft outfield, but we still fancied our chances.

We had some good starts in our upper order (yours truly excluded) and Colin (33) and Justin P. were looking particularly solid to have us 1/50-odd in short order. Brett and JB each contributed with short, swashbuckling cameos but were backed up only by shorter, slightly less swashbuckling appearances as the wickets fell. After having been 4/90-odd (I think) we were all out for 115 in the 17th over.

One of positives we draw from this game is that we showed that we have the ability to come back from a difficult situation when fielding just by bowling up and on the spot and taking our catches. We need more time in the nets until all of our bowlers can pretty much bowl 6 out of 6 balls in the right areas. Our batting was pretty good for a season opener against strong opposition, but we do need to improve on partnership building, and our calling and running between wickets. As the Engineering openers showed us, it really only takes one solid extended partnership in this form of the game to completely turn a match, and we lacked that last night.