Lamma Vs Kai Tak, 16th Sep, PKVR.
Lamma 188/ 8
S.Parker 10-3-67, T.Patidar 2-2-13, B.Morley 9-1-26, C.McGann 3-1-15
Kai Tak 114
Al Noble 18*, S.Campbell 16, D.Grobler 16
Saturday 16th September Kai Tak finally
commenced the season against Lamma CC. With the team available one
surely felt it was going to our day.
On turning up to the ground the base of
the stumps could not be seen due to the farmers' field length of
grass. Cows should have been grazing on it, let alone playing a
cricket match.
Anyway it was the same for both sides, the
toss was called with Kai Tak losing and promptly being sent out to
field. Lamma our nemesis for the past couple of years at least were
boosted in strength by one Butt Hussain and with Sher Lama coming in
at No 6 it was a pretty strong lineup. Nevertheless a job had to done
and hopefully our new bowlers would be able perform outside of the
nets. The opening pair of Morley and new boy Scott Parker proved very
effective in keeping the runs down with only 45 runs scored in the
first 10 overs. Shortly thereafter Parker managed to get a nick and an
excellent diving catch was taken by Adam Gunthorpe behind the stumps,
removing the dangerous Jamshaid Khan. The problem remained in that the
Butt was still there and apart from trying unsuccessfully to launch a
few out the park played an excellent innings before eventually falling
to Parker caught at deep long off my Morley for 69.
Dirk Grobler put his leg spinners to work
very effectively and I'm sure will be pretty succesfull in the 35 over
format,as well as HP Odendaal who bowled little away swingers. Carl Mcgann
also chipped in with 3 tidy overs.
Overall Morley was the pick of the bowlers
with 9 overs 1wkt for 26, with Parker picking up 3 wkts, 2 for Patidar
and 1 for Mcgann who also created an excellent run out. The ground
fielding was very good throughout.
Lamma ended up with 188 runs for 8 off the
35 overs. Whilst the total was gettable with our batting lineup I
think a few more overs under the guys belts will surely help drive
down the numbers of extras in the innings. Altogether we bowled 21
extra deliveries at them, an additional 3 overs plus the runs scored
from the extra deliveries, so something we can definately work on, but
having said that the conditions really changed people rythms so let's
hope for some drier conditions next time.
So chasing the target involved going at
around 4 an over. There's not much more that can be said about our
batting effort or lack of. I've never seen or certainly can't recall a
game where we've started so badly by gifting our wickets away. We
weren't chasing 280 but shot selection and lack of patience gave that
impression. The top 6 amassed a total of 36 runs and as a result Kai
Tak were dead in the water. The bowling of Lamma, granted was of high
standard, and that in itself should have been the signal to dig in and
graft an innings.
9 batters were caught in our reply and we
were skittled for 114 runs with 8 overs to go, Al Noble not out top
scoring with 18.
I know we won't bat that poorly in future
games so let's just move on and start again with CCC on the 30th
September. With the squad that we now have we still have a great
chance of ruffling some feathers at the top end of the league table.
We've had our bad game, we've got the batters and now the bowlers so
let's start showing these teams what we can do!!