League Match vs The Crescent & Star, 7th May 2005, London Fields
Going "Cheap"
by Vice Skip Andy Wyatt
Anticipation was high as we met the league champions on London Fields on Saturday. The Crescent & Star showed typical bravado when choosing to bat, even with conditions seemingly in favour of the bowlers. They love to play their shots and, if one gets caught out, so be it, there will be another strokeplayer to take his place.
These tactics nearly led to a shock defeat against The Village last week, but their cause today was aided by a hailstorm after a couple of overs. Rather than adding some zip to the pitch, it seemed to placate it. The slippery underfoot conditions* and greasy ball made accurate bowling that two degrees more difficult.
The Crescent kept the scoreboard gradually accelerating all through their innings, and London Fields could not take enough wickets to disrupt them. Whilst no dropped catch was as significant as some we could mention from last year (er, mine at square leg), there were enough to give the opposition added momentum.
Stuart Gunn took 2 for 24, even with four catches being dropped off him, and Alec McCrindle took 3 for 36, as the Crescent posted 253.
We set out with a positive attitude to chase the target of more than seven an over. Everyone played some nice shots, but we lost wickets too often to keep the pressure on and the game ended quite tamely with the Crescent victors by over 50 runs. Credit goes to Alec, Rick Derons and Paul Turley for getting into the twenties, and especially to Rupert Nightingale, who did so with a broken finger. His wicketkeeping injury is another to add to a worrying list within the club this year. We wish them all speedy recoveries.
The North East London Pub League (as we still call it) this season contains
a fascinating underlying pattern of three match series against all our opponents.
We must thus raise our game to comeback from this loss in the future,
but, in that old cliché, the next game
is the most important. As mentioned earlier, our next opponents, The
Village, nearly overturned the champions so they are not to be underestimated.
* Richard Johnson, sidelined through injury, hobbled up Broadway Market in search of some sawdust for the bowlers' footmarks. The petshop did not have any, but if you can provide a good home for a 5 month old budgie, please get in touch. Expensive? No, I think its going ...
Anyway, here's the scorecard:
Their Batting:
253 for 7 wickets in 35 overs
London Fields Bowling:
| Name | Overs | Maidens | Runs | Wickets | Average |
| Paul T | 5 | 0 | 25 | 0 | - |
| Rick | 5 | 1 | 37 | 0 | - |
| Divan | 4 | 0 | 27 | 0 | - |
| Stuart | 5 | 0 | 24 | 2 | 12 |
| Steve D | 5 | 0 | 47 | 0 | - |
| Nick B | 3 | 0 | 23 | 0 | - |
| Carl | 3 | 0 | 29 | 0 | - |
| Alec | 5 | 0 | 36 | 3 | 12 |
London Fields Batting:
| Batsman | Scoring | How Out | Bowler | Total |
| Dave | - | bowled | Abid | 10 |
| Steve D | - | lbw | Malek | 13 |
| Jason L | - | bowled | Nadeem | 2 |
| Alec | - | bowled | Yusef | 27 |
| Divan | - | lbw | Nadeem | 6 |
| Rick | - | bowled | Mahmood | 25 |
| Rupert | - | caught | Mahmood | 22 |
| Stuart | run | out | 0 | |
| Nick B | - | bowled | Asif | 15 |
| Carl | - | caught | Mahmood | 1 |
| Paul | - | not | out | 24 |
| Extras | ? | |||
| Total: 202 all out | ||||
Crescent & Star Bowling:
| Name | Overs | Maidens | Runs | Wickets | Average |
| Malek | 5 | 0 | 35 | 1 | 35 |
| Abid | 5 | 1 | 16 | 1 | 16 |
| Nadeem | 4 | 0 | 11 | 2 | 5.5 |
| Tahir | 3 | 0 | 24 | 0 | - |
| Yusef | 3 | 0 | 19 | 1 | 19 |
| Kashif | 3 | 0 | 18 | 0 | - |
| Mahmood | 4 | 0 | 29 | 2 | 14.5 |
| Asif | 5 | 0 | 12 | 2 | 6 |
| Syd | 2 | 1 | 7 | 0 | - |
| Majid | 1 | 0 | 4 | 0 | - |