This game should be remembered for the day in which some of Teddington's young colts proved what a collective bag of talent they are. 4s captain, Matt O'Toole had packed the team with young talent (7 in all), now that we had some of them finally available and we faced Richmond at home in a must win game (if we wanted to retain a slim chance of going up).
Toss won and on a warm, but overcast day, the opposition were stuck. Runs can be relatively easy to score on the second team's ground, if you get yourself in and this was proving to be the case, as Richmond managed to pile on 267-8, before declaring for the loss of 8 wickets from 46 overs. Elliot Harmer did well in returning 9-0-50-3 with his off spin, as did Adam Spencer (on debut), returning 4-0-24-2.
Matt decided to delegate the job of chasing this down to the colts and put all seven to the top of the order (it's not child labour, honest!), relegating himself to #11 for the first (and maybe not the last) time. Seeing as Tom and Patrick Elway probably hadn't had much chance to bat together, Matt decided to let them open the batting. Unfortunately, that didn't work out as they were both out cheaply and we were 22-2 and then 51-3 after Adam had followed for 10. However, Oli George was beginning to accumulate runs with ease (you've got to see his cover drives - they are Bell-esque!) and after he'd reached a very quick and classy 61 (12 x 4s), we were 98-4. Enter the stage, Elliot Harmer and Krishan Sachdeva. They smacked a few boundaries managed to accumulate 70 more runs for us, before Krish (35 - 5 x 4s, 1 x 6) departed, leaving the bulk of the rest of the work to an increasingly comfortable looking Elliot, who was on 40 by this point. He began to really lead the way then and after 36 overs, we were sitting on 200-7 with adult batsmen still left. Not all of these were needed, tho, as Shaz Butt joined him and saw off the remaining runs with 2 overs to spare! Elliot was left stranded on 94* (14 x 4s). It had been a class knock and takes his average for the 4s this year to a mere 182!! Incredible.
A great win and it had been nice that much of the 1st team and the chairman and a few others had been around to witness it at the end. Well done, lads!