The latest league fixture for Aliens was against Søndre Nordstrand up at Rommen Cricket ground. We were met with a chilly and overcast midsummer’s day, with rain predicted for later in the morning. To our delight, the skipper won his first toss of the season and decided it’s time we had bat first. Aliens put on a superb 239 for 1 off our allotted 30 overs.
Damien Shortis and Max Cook opened the batting and got us off to a great start, putting on 71 runs at almost a run a ball. Max was Aliens only wicket to fall when he decided to make the least of his second chance (dropped the ball before) and drove a full ball straight back at the bowler. It was a pretty good catch, but it wasn’t hit quite as hard as suggested by the batsman. Max fell for a useful 33 of 38 balls, including 2 fours and Boxy’s favorite shot of the day, a back foot punch through the covers for 3. This brought the vice-skipper, Vijai Prabhudass, to the crease. Vijai has been batting well all season and looked determined keep it up. He started a little bit scratchy, perhaps trying to hit the ball a bit to hard, but after some encouragement from the skipper, he recovered in grand style and ended up with an excellent 56 not out, at quicker than a run a ball. His innings included 4 fours and 2 delightful consecutive sixes over extra cover. As you may have noticed, I haven’t mentioned our third batsman for the day. Well he batted so well that he deserves his own paragraph.
All week, Damien was telling us that he had a hundred in him this
week. He couldn’t have been more right. He batted with determination,
grace, power and agility. His running between the wickets was a
perfect example of making the most of every shot
and the second half of his innings hardly included a dot ball. He
ended the day undefeated on 135 off 96 balls, which is the highest
score for an Aliens player
in a league fixture. If I remember correctly, he went from about 80
runs to 135 in only 25 balls
or so. He got to his hundred with a cut shot for four and carried on
by hitting 3 more consecutive fours. Damien’s innings included 15
fours and 3 sixes, one of which was a swashbuckling straight pull over
the bowlers head.
Damien and Vijai’s 2nd wicket partnership broke the record of any
partnership in Aliens history, an undefeated 162. The previous being
146 for the 1st wicket between Max Cook and Damien Shortis vs Strømso
in 2009.
Having 240 to get, the Nordstrand batsmen started after our
bowlers early on and got off to a pretty good start, going at about 9
an over for the first few overs. Our bowlers reigned in the boundaries
with wickets falling somewhat regularly, but the Nordstrand
batsmen managed to keep up with the required rate. In the end, they
needed about 50 or so runs off the last 5 overs with two or three
wickets in hand. Not an easy task, but there were a few nervous faces
amongst the Aliens players. However, our bowlers stuck
to their guns and we ended up winning the game by 32 runs. Highlights
from our fielding were a superb one handed caught and bowled by Malcolm
late in the game and an excellent diving catch from Jonathan at point.
After sprinting around for the whole of our
batting innings, Damien fielded well on the boundary and facilitated
two run outs. Alan again bowled well and ended up with 2 for 26 off his
6 overs but the leading wicket taker was Malcolm, who took 3 for 31 off
his 3 overs.
All in all, it was an excellent win for the Aliens. A win that
has moved us up securely into the middle of the Division 1 table, only
7 points behinds the leaders, Baerum.
Man of the match was Damien for his obvious reasons. |
