Improved Strongroom lose again
Turney Road, Dulwich, 7/31/2011
Gardeners won by 4 wickets
Strongroom: 179-8 [B.Nagpal 48]
Gardeners: 180-5 [J.Elliot 45]
View the Scorecard
Despite winning the toss, Strongroom did not have an ideal start to the game with 6 players arriving late, which disrupted the top of the batting order. Gardeners opening bowlers were tight and swung the ball and made early inroads and were unfortunate not to do more damage. Siam offered an early counterattack, before Harry and Bhasvar settled down to play steady, watchful innings. Harry found it hard to put the spinners away, but Bhasvar played an excellent innings, scoring his first Strongroom runs, and he was unlucky to carve a long hop to point and narrowly miss out on a 50. Harry and Bhasvar fell within 3 balls with more than 10 overs to go, but Dave Proctor stopped any further rot and later built on his steady start to provide some much-needed late impetus. Strongroom batted out their 40 overs for the first time in what seemed like months. This was to their credit, but 179 felt about 40 runs short of a truly competitive total on what was a fast outfield.
Strongroom started badly with the ball. Karan and Dave P found it difficult to find rhythm and Gardeners were up and running at over 5 an over without much trouble. The brakes were applied with some good spin bowling from Joe and Chris. Both were excellent, with only Chirs’ last over denting his otherwise excellent figures. Although the run rate had now dropped to under 4, Strongroom had failed to mount the real pressure that would have come with wickets. Dave Gower prised out Hussain thanks to a good Bhasvar stumping (Bhasvar was very tidy all innings), and things looked brighter when Siam bowled with good pace and accuracy to remove a dogged Clayton. Any chance of a glimpse of victory was soon snuffed out as a classy Elliot and hard-hitting Cunningham moved up a gear and showed how quick the outfield was. Despite these two falling to more spin (Dave and Harry), the end came with 5 full overs to spare.
This was a much more enjoyable game than of late, despite another defeat. It had at least lasted 76 overs and felt like a game rather than a massacre. Karan took two excellent catches – something we did better than Gardeners (about 6 drops), but our ground fielding was a little sleepy at times. Without the early wickets, 179 was never going to be enough.
Written By: D.Gower
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