Octopus CC vs Whalers CC; Alexandra Park; Sunday 8th September 2019
The last game of the cricketing season brought a wave of enthusiastic part timers out from behind the sofa, leaving The Whalers with an unprecedented 17 man squad at the midweek stage. By midday on Sunday this had been reduced to 8 present players & and SOS call from an errant Kamal.
Having won his final toss as Whalers skipper Jack opted to bat first, with openers Will and Fraser putting on 27 for the opening partnership before Fraser was out LBW, with Suhab coming in and falling for 1 shortly after. This brought Geoff to the crease, who set about solidly rebuilding the Whalers innings alongside Will. By the time Will had departed for 41, including some lofty cover drives that looked suspiciously like good cricket shots, Geoff had already blasted his way to 50.
Partnered with Aseem (2) Geoff continued to dispatch all bowlers to the nearest boundary on his way to a swashbuckling 95, before running himself out – in what he called a “sacrifice for the team” and what everyone else called “jug avoidance”. This brought Amit’s friend Amit to the crease who had a brief cameo of 16 – including bludgeoning 14 off one over of the returning opening bowler.
The Whalers innings somewhat fizzled out with Jack making 3 before being bowled, and Nick being run out for 0 after meeting Kamal at the crease for an impromptu team meeting, while Octopus delightedly ran him out at the other end.
Set 208 to win Octopus immediately lost one of their openers clean bowled by Nick, but promptly set about rebuilding their innings with a big partnership between two batsmen I don’t know the name of because I forgot to take a picture of that part of the scorebook.
Having been gifted several second chances by the ever generous Whalers fielding unit, the breakthrough wicket came from Aseem who was rewarded for a dangerous spell of bowling. Another wicket for Aseem, along with 2 for Amit & 1 from Geoff restricted Alexandra’s scoring, however a few lucky 4’s near the end of their innings left them needing only 1 for victory off the final over. 3 dot balls in a row from Amit briefly offered hope before a scrambled single sealed the win for the home team.
M.O.M – Geoff’s 95
Champagne – Amit’s friend Amit’s big hitting
Muppet – Kamal and Nick running out Nick