The closest we came to victory...
Surrey Cricket Ground, Magonna, Sri Lanka, 3/1/2016
Memon Cricket Association won by 1 wicket
Strongroom: 158-7 [M.Nicholson 79]
Memon Cricket Association: 161-9 [J.Rahman 4-30]
View the Scorecard
Maggona is a beautiful ground, positioned deep in countryside, cut out of the laterite, a few miles inland from the coast. Surrey CC had helped fund the build of this ground, in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami that devastated this coastal region.
David Proctor resumed the captaincy, his achilles still sore, but he was able to stand at slip and give command. David won the toss and we batted first. Mitch (79) and Jimmy (20) put on a good opening stand, with Mitch proving particularly severe on anything short or wide that the pace bowlers provided, the rapid outfield and good pitch providing some promise. We were enjoying the batting when Richard Boote and family suddenly appeared in a tuk-tuk - keen to keep a presidential eye on Strongroom’s progress! It was great surprise and lovely to have some additional support.
Memon CC then brought spinners into the attack, and once again wickets fell and our momentum stalled. Mitch was again outstanding, and contributed exactly half of our eventual total of 158. Clearly, once again we were 50 short of a workable total. Our batsman really struggled to cope with high quality wrist and finger spin - something which we rarely come up against in London. The main difficulties were encountered in trying to score off the spinners - survival was possible but fairly useless in a limited overs context. Jon looked solid but just couldn’t puncture the infield, find the boundaries, or quite tick over with enough singles. Joe struggled to build on his promising innings of the day before - his square offside push repeatedly contacting nothing but air. As well as the runs drying up, wickets tumbled. A mini-switch in momentum was assembled by Tim (bagging a hat trick of not outs) and Dave G in the last couple of overs and we knew in the break that, as with the day before, we would need early wickets.
In our reply, Grant made great use of overhead cloud cover and got the ball to talk from the first few deliveries. Grant (3-50) actually bowled perhaps the best spell we have ever seen him deliver - beautifully controlled away-swing, on a perfect length - and without too many of his other tricks! There was possibly one delivery too straight but otherwise the batsmen kept having to play good length balls on or just outside off stump. David P completed one of Grant’s wickets, neatly pouching one of the openers at 1st slip above his head. At the other end, Joe (4-30) once again proved too hot to handle, working with a stiff cross-breeze and tempting the batsmen into indiscretions with crafty drift and guile. The highlight here was his dismissal of Bashith (first-class cricketer, Colombo centurion against us), as he fatally misjudged one that held it’s line. This sent us into a state of delirious joy, as we knew full well the value of his wicket.
As at Matara, the middle order fell into a habit of blocking and slogging, and seemed strangely unconvincing at chasing a smallish total. By now we were really in this game, and we sensed our first ever victory on foreign soil was surely within our grasp. The opposition were down to about 110-9. However, Joe had bowled out and Grant’s second spell with an older ball wasn’t quite up to the very high standards of his first and Tim had had too much sleep to reproduce his Matara heroics. The final two batsmen (31* and 18*) played far more sensibly, and smartly nudged their way to a very frustrating victory. We needed one of them to make a mistake but they played really well, especially the young number XI. For Strongroom, everyone gave their all - the ground fielding was pretty good (maybe this was the only game in which we didn’t drop any catches?), Mitch kept wicket with much skill and kept the fielders and bowlers focused, Tim again bowled well and Ujjal introduced us to some promising off-spin for the first time. Again, we were some runs short in our total, and ultimately this was the primary cause of our defeat. Damn close though...
After the game we headed off to the coastal village of Payagala, and for a much-deserved dip in the Indian Ocean.
Written By: The Brothers Gower
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