Mordern Corinthians won by 119 runs
In
the annals of Whalers history this game won’t go down as one of the highlights
as their two match winning streak came to an abrupt end. On a sunny afternoon
with the pitch looking good the Morden captain won the toss and decided to have
a bat. This left Captain Jimmy with a couple of headaches, firstly the
whereabouts of VDP who was still negotiating the mean streets of
Jimmy
and Will R opened the bowling and Jimmy soon had one of their openers back in
the pavilion, however with the Whalers one fielder down and an amount of byes
going past the keeper (it has to added Channa did a
great job behind the stumps and improved greatly as the innings went on) Modern
were able to push along at around 5 an over. Their number 2 batsmen appeared
the aggressor and wasn’t afraid to take the aerial route. However after being
caught off a Lucas no-ball he went in the next Lucas over caught and bowled.
Their number 3 soon followed but the Whalers weren’t able to take advantage and
Morden set about re-building their innings and despite some pretty accurate
bowling they were able to keep moving along at over 5 runs an over. Their
number 4 batsmen (who looked suspiciously like Michael Vaughan) topped scored
with 46 before he was caught by Piers off Will R, but everyone down to 7
contributed and there were some particularly lusty strokes towards the end as
Modern posted a rather imposing 246-6 of their 40 overs.
There were a couple of run outs in the later overs as
the batsmen pushed for runs. The first came after the batsmen attempted a
suicidal run after Matt dropped a sitter (he does only seem to be able to take
catches off his own bowling). The second came in even more comical fashion, as
the ball was skied towards deep square the Whalers watched in confusion as
debutant Ollie made no attempt to move to take the catch, it turns out he
thought the umpire was in fact a fielder and was expecting him to take it.
Rather surprisingly the umpire declined to take the catch and in the ensuing
chaos the batsmen came back for an ill-judged second and were easily run out.
So,
after a hearty tea with a good selection of cakes and to the sound of extremely
bad kareoke blaring from the pavilion Al and Will VDP
started the run chase. Although the bowling looked dangerous the first 9 overs were successfully negotiated, however when the score
was on 32 Will missed a straight one and departed lbw
for 12. This then started a collapse of quite impressive proportions as against
some very accurate bowling 32-0 swiftly became 65-8 with Piers, Ads, Phil, Channa, Matt and Kamal doing
their best not to trouble the scorers too much. With an embarrassing defeat
being stared in the face and a field of pretty much 10 close catchers Jimmy
took it on himself to add a semblance of respectability to the total and with
able support from Ollie added some much needed runs to the Whalers total. Top
scoring with 48 (very conveniently getting caught just short of his 50 to avoid
buying a jug) which included 3 sixes he dragged the total up to 129 all out.
Still barely half Moderns total but a lot better than it could have been.
All
in all the Whalers were outplayed against strong opposition and the maiden
victory against these opponents will have to wait until next year.
Match stats:
Modern
246-6 off 40 overs – Matt 2/29, Will R 1/43, Jimmy
1/54
Whalers
127 all out – Jimmy 48, Al 21, Will VDP 12
Man of the Match: Jimmy,
fantastic innings
Champagne Moment: Jimmy’s
biggest out of his 3 sixes
Muppet Moment: Phil’s
dropped catch in the covers, although Matt and Will R also dropped very
straight forward chances