With three wins on the bounce, Clapham In returned to Barn Elms to take on Whalers in fine form and confident of continuing an astonishingly strong June… if only half the team could find the ground.
Once lost souls from both teams had been rounded up from alternative grounds in the area and told that ‘yes that incredibly green thing out there is a pitch’ we were ready for the toss, which would likely be key on the hottest day of the year and on a track that had been used for at least 2 games already over the weekend.
In the finest of CICC traditions, acting captain Steve Smith took it upon himself to lose the toss. We were promptly sent out into the field with the day already bearing an uncanny resemblance to last year’s drubbing at the hands of a dominant Whalers batting lineup (albeit this time our acting captain didn’t chose to field first).
As expected, Whalers set off at a rate of knots, with the opening ten overs seeing Jaymin Pandya (7-0-54-0) and Tom Bage pick up just one wicket between them while watching plenty of balls disappear to the boundary.
The ball was thrown to 2024’s leading wicket-taker Shantan Tanuku to try and wrestle control of the game, with James Smith taking over at the other end. Between them they began to create more chances even if the run rate barely faltered for Whalers, before a clever change of pace from Tanuku and some subtle field movements brought the downfall of the Whalers tormenter-in-chief for a punishing 49.
Again this hardly seemed to break Whalers’ stride for the next few overs until, after a customary declaration about the merits of hating cricket, Smith struck to remove their number 3 for a well-made 46. Finally, Whalers were slowing down.
Matt Williams replaced Tanuku (7-1-31-1) at the Wetlands End and rolled back the years to remind everyone he is an all-rounder. The next three wickets fell in quick succession to the pairing of Smith and Williams, with Whalers only making three runs between the 4th and 6th wickets.
Things were looking up as Smith (7-0-44-3) came to the end of his spell to be replaced from the Other End by Bhavik Pandya, keen to show up his brother. In a short death bowling spell he did exactly that to pick up three wickets in just three overs, two lbw and one bowled. With Bhavik tying them up at one end, Whalers took their frustration out on the end of Williams’ (4-0-29-1) spell and that of a returning Bage (6.3-0-50-2) to finish all out for 231.
Clapham In left the field hot, bothered, but mildly assured that on a true pitch with a fast outfield this total could be chased down if things went our way…
Against some sharp and accurate opening bowling Riaan Ferreira and David Burgess-Bellay made a steady early start for CICC, but just as Ferreira (18) was starting to find the boundary with regularity he snicked off to first slip to bring S. Smith (and a change of bat for DBB) to the crease.
In incredibly un-Smithlike fashion, the acting captain set off at a strike rate of 120, with the Whalers quicker bowlers feeding his cut shot for over after over. At the other end, switching from the stolen bat of Ed Gregory to his opening partner’s bat appeared to have done little for DBB (10) who was soon out caught by the same slip off the same bowler but a different edge of the same bat as Ferreira.
Smith continued to rattle along at over a run a ball with his new partner Leon Crowley, and the pair brought up a 50 partnership in 51 balls. Unfortunately, it was not long after this that Smith reached 40, Whalers suddenly realised they could put a fielder in the way of his cut shot, and his strike rate collapsed. Crowley tried to up the tempo again from the other end but couldn’t get hold of one and departed caught for 25 to bring James Lynch to the middle with instructions to “hit it as hard as you can”.
He set about doing exactly that, hitting his second ball for four and trying to hit every ball after that to the fence as well. While he may have missed a few of them, he was still scoring rapidly with a huge six over cow corner followed up by one of the hardest hit cover drives in Clapham In history that gave everyone a nice break in the heat while a fielder trotted a couple of hundred metres to collect it.
Smith brought up his 50 and began to accelerate again, running hard with Lynch for 2s at every opportunity. Just as their partnership appeared to have found an identity, Lynch (24) was out caught and bowled trying to keep the boundaries flowing. Tanuku was hauled up the order to try and keep the boundaries coming and keep Whalers on the back foot but his partnership with Smith (64) would be short-lived as the captain was bowled by one of the few balls all day to stay low.
Williams joined Tanuku in the middle and the pair of them tried to replicate the Lynch and Smith partnership with hard running and boundary hitting, but it only lasted five runs before Tanuku (6) was run out trying to pressure the fielders. With the required run rate now creeping above 10, J.Smith and Williams tried to keep up by running more tight 2s, but thanks to continued good bowling the boundaries remained few and far between, eventually Williams (21) was out caught as he attempted to accelerate again, leaving Smith (8*) with the tail to try and chase a total that suddenly looked completely out of reach.
The tail of J.Pandya (2), B.Pandya (0), and Bage (1*) did what tailenders do in such a situation, swinging hard for the fences with no avail, but at least CICC were not bowled out in finishing 39 runs shy of Whalers total.
About the author: Tom Bage is the quizzing equivalent of Max Verstappen in F1, leaving the rest of us fighting for 2nd. He also bowls pretty well, and would be a decent bet to be the first CICC player to take 3 five-fors.
