5th XI win at Hyde

14th Aug 2022, game start time 1 pm. Another scorcher of a day and the TCC 5 Sunday team headed up into the hills for a match at Hyde. The altitude of the ground only meant that we were slightly closer to the sun in this drought-inducing heat wave (not sure if it had any material impact, but important fact to make reference to, nevertheless). Team selection was slightly up and down; Zain having to drop out at the last minute given an emergency at home (probably at a beach somewhere, we all suspected); Kiran texted at 10 minutes to 1 to check if he was selected to play….

Eventually we had 11 players at the ground by start time.

Shahnawaz Khan ( aka Doc) won the toss and elected to field first. The field was set up without much ado. Jurjees kicked off proceedings and struck in his first over, then Mo returned the favour and struck in his first over at the other end. Jurjees then struck again in his next over for his second; ( score at 3 wickets for 0 runs in 3); not to be outdone at the other end, Mo struck in his second over, leaving Hyde reeling for 4 overs 4 wickets and 4 runs. I wish we had a smart phone somewhere on the field to capture a picture of the scoreboard but unfortunately Zain wasn’t playing!!! For reasons still unknown to many, the scorer conveniently stationed himself in the sun, just outside a reasonably loud christening party at the club, furthest from the ground, so that any signals from the ground could be heard clearly (not really )….For example, shouting out ‘change of bowler - Kaushal Keramani’ to the scorer from the field was a pointless exercise and that was swiftly abbreviated to ‘KK’… Perhaps that may well have been the reason why ‘Satyajit Velaskar’ wasn’t asked to bowl, let alone the fact that he can’t bowl to save his life…but that is a discussion for another time...

Wickets kept falling regularly as none of the Hyde batsman got into a rhythm except batsman no. 3 who held the fort and finally finished at 47 not out. Two father - son combinations in the team gave the sons a chance to boldly slate (conveniently forgetting the fact that they still needed lifts back home!) their dads (dropped catches at slips) and the wicket keeper actually asking his dad to bend his knees and get behind the ball or something to that effect !!!!. We won’t go into names of course. Fielding standards were high generally (barring a couple of dropped sharp catches) and with a great stop by Ameya, which resulted in a run out. The bowling overall was superb with Mo and Haris finishing with 4 and 3 wickets each, Jurjees with 2 and Chris Neville polishing off the tail with 1 wicket. Kaushal and Chris T bowled tight spells but without any success. The Hyde innings wrapped up in 35 overs with a score of 105.

Lunch was consumed quickly with not enough drama to report about, only that Freddie almost sounded unhappy that Hyde had only set up a target of 105 in 55 overs @ roughly 2 an over!!!

Freddie and Haris opened the batting and batted fluently until Haris was out LBW on circa 3 -4 runs. Freddie was joined by Ameya and the asking rate of 2 runs per over was soon forgotten about. Freddie finished with an aggressive 68 (in circa 38 balls or so) not out with 4 huge sixes (which also meant 4 balls lost in the surrounding field) and Ameya remaining not out on a fluent 32. The target was achieved in 15 overs.

TCC5s now in 4th place on the table with about 3 more games to go. Fears of relegation and promotion (yes I did say fears!) both now tucked away safely. Onwards and upwards now with a game against top of the table Didsbury next week. Good luck….I suspect they might need it!!!