Match tied!
Highgate Wood, 3/6/2017
Match tied
Strongroom: 204-7 [M.Nicholson 69, J.Gower 47]
Gaieties: 204-7 [H.Thurston 53]
View the Scorecard
Fantastic conditions for cricket. Mid-20s and a light breeze. This was my 200th game for Strongroom, and I was hoping it would result in our first ever win over Gaieties. The chances of this were increased by the absence of Shomit and James Schneider. We won the toss and batted. Mitch played supremely well, even by his standards. In particular his onside strokes ‘on the up’ were a pleasure to behold. However, wickets fell, and Mitch was undone by a filthy grubber. The veteran Gower brothers steadied the ship with some gritty batting (38 from 14 overs), but it nonetheless did the job of preventing a collapse and creating a platform for some biffing later on. There was also relentless spin to contend with from the Gaieties, with Tariq (left-arm), Tim (off-break) and Hugo (Chinaman) providing variety and guile. David Proctor provided some much-needed muscle in the latter overs, and 204 seemed a reasonable total given the overall circumstances. Tea was a big messy affair, with multiple provision courtesy of JG, DG and Andrew Nicoletti. Mohmed and Grant bowled an impressively disciplined opening spell, although it seems Tim Schneider was unlucky no-one heard his inside edge. Thereupon followed a long partnership by Hugo and Jones, albeit steadily-paced. The run chase was tantalisingly poised at 68-2 off 20 overs. The last 20 overs were intense, and the game’s fate seesawed relentlessly from one side to the other. To add to the drama, I dropped Hugo off my brother at long-off. The bowling was focused, in particular Hem dropped his pace and found a spot that Hugo struggled to attack from, and David Gower bowled his zippy medium pace and looked good from the get-go. Then finally, Dave G caught Hugo in the deep and we sensed the game had tilted in our favour. But skipped Rob Crowe had other ideas, and set about the bowling with some beefy hitting a la Darren Sammy. Gaieties required 10 from the final over. My first ball was bludgeoned straight by Crowe for 6. A few heads dropped. But my next 4 balls were decent, and they only gathered 2 more runs. 2 required from the final ball. Again a full straight one was crunched...but only for a single, and the match was tied.
This was a truly epic game. A real privilege to be a part of it. We came so close…
Written By: J.Gower
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