Concorde v Woking and Horsell

Match Report

FIRST GAME THRASHING BUT STILL GREAT TO BE BACK!

Last week saw our season finally get underway against our local rivals & friends from Woking & Horsell.

We were ‘scratching around’ for a team right up until the last minute but despite losing Jerry Wright with a knee injury the night before the game, we got some unexpectedly good news that Jon Willson’s move to Bognor Regis has been delayed and Nikhil Kadyan was in the south for the weekend from his adopted Scotland and both stepped in! The opposition then offered us the services of Kausev Rao, an all rounder and we suddenly had 11.

The opposition fielded a very talented but young team of mostly well coached teenagers or early 20’s with a few older heads, and on winning the toss they elected to bat. John W. unexpectedly back at the helm, opened with an interesting combination of Justin Row from the pavilion end and Nikhil’s accurate and well crafted left arm spin from the mansion end! We had a dream start as in the first over Justin found the outside edge of the opener’s bat and Richard Ingham picked up a very smart slip catch ‘off his bootlaces’. A few overs later Nikhil turned one to trap the other opener plumb in front and it was 15-2. There then followed an excellent passage of play as Justin bowled with good pace and accuracy only yielding the odd boundary here and there, mostly off the edge, whilst Nikhil had a great contest against the visitors main attacking batsman ,who actually coaches most of their players! For about 4-5 consecutive overs Nikhil’s variety & guile stopped virtually stopped him from scoring- it was brilliant to watch! Justin picked up his second wicket bowling the left handed no.4 to make it 45-3, before giving way to young Rhys Maturin, making his club debut. With his second ball ‘the coach’ lofted a drive to deep mid off which unfortunately burst through Nigel Wright’s hands, but what we all feared might be an ‘expensive’ drop , was soon forgotten as a couple of balls later Rhys bowled him off stump with one that moved in a bit and kept a fraction low and at 55-4 we were pretty happy with life! We then saw a period of steady progress by W&H but punctuated with something very seldom seen at Sendholme – we took regular wickets by some excellent catching including another outstanding slip catch by Richard off Matt S. diving away to his left, a diving effort by Nigel at square leg to dismiss the younger of the Bach brothers, followed by a sharp ‘nick’ taken by Nick F. standing up (the sort of catch the bowler always expects to be taken but often isn’t) the writer then pouched a ‘mini’ skier at backward square leg off young Joe Farrell to give him his first club wicket, and finally Joe returned to compliment to the writer with a catch above his head at mid on. A couple of other hard chances were spilled but generally an exceptional fielding effort. Nikhil bowled the last man and the visitors were all out early for 150.

John juggled the bowling very cleverly to give the two young debutants Rhys & Joe, and guest Kausev a go , supporting our most potent bowlers in Justin & Nikhil, with just a few overs from Matt & I to support, with none at all from John himself! We would have settled for 150 at the start!

Bowling figs: Justin 8-1-47-2, Nikhil 10.3-2-19-2, Rhys 6-1-27-1, Matt 6-1-18-2, Kausev 4-0-18-1, Joe 3-0-25-1, Ian 2-1-5-1.

The sad news is that tea ladies Janet & Dot have retired from duty, so myself and Matt obliged supported by M&S and Sainsbury’s!

As with his bowling, John decided to to mix it up a bit and opened with himself and Nigel, who is more used to trying to save games at the end, but this proved less successful as Nigel was bowled for a single in the third over to make it 4-1, young Joe got off the mark straight away but was lbw next over to Johnny Ayling from the mansion end to reduce us to 5-2. Kausev joined John to ‘face the music’ , banter & constant appealing from his regular teammates, but it was John who fell next for 4, caught at mid off from a mistimed drive! There was then an important moment in W&H history as Johnny Ayling had Nick Freeman caught at slip for 8, which made it 39-4, but more significantly it was Johnny’s 600th wicket for the club he has represented for about 16 years- some achievement! All done in front of his wife and new baby ‘River’ although sadly she was fast asleep at the time the catch was taken (the baby I mean) so she will have to hear about it in future years from her dad!

What happened next is hard to report- we went from 39-4 to 52 all out in the ‘blink of an eye’ with Rhys, Nikhil, Richard & I all failing to trouble the scorers, Justin hit two fours before being stumped, and Matt was 7 n.o. but we were ‘bundled out’ in just over 19 overs with 14 of the last 20 still to go! In truth it was a dismal performance with the bat with only Kausev Rao getting double figures with 22 against his own team!
Johnny Ayling finished with 5-16.

Despite what happened after tea, we must remember that for most of us it was the first outing of the season with little or no practice and the positives were the promising debuts of Rhys & Joe, having John W. back for a little while and seeing & playing with Nikhil again. Our fielding & bowling was very good and if we can get some of our stalwarts back in late July & August , we might yet put out a competitive side a few times before the end of the season. It certainly felt good to be out there again!