After the disappointment of conceding last week’s match due to a lack of players, TCC's 4th XI returned to winning ways on the pitch and more importantly showed great sportsmanship summed up by Shazum retiring his innings to let our U13 debutant Dan Carter to come in and have a bat.
Matt won the toss and elected to field. We started with 11 men (well Tauseef was only 3 minutes late) and the banter started immediately. As Olly marked his runup Tauseef noticed we had a new keeper in Dan Carter and exclaimed: “we finally have a keeper!”
Indian Gym openers lead a bit of a charmed life and runs were gathered mainly through edges from Olly and Archie’s opening few overs. However both bowlers kept the pressure up and Olly finally got a breakthrough inducing an edge to give Dan Carter his first catch in senior cricket. This was quickly followed by another wicket clean bowled as the batsman was somewhat fooled by a slower ball as Olly’s energy ran out in his delivery stride! From there on in – we had the Tauseef show (14.1 overs, 5 for 37) - he kept a beautiful line and length and even had a runout to add to the mix. His first wicket was another catch by Dan Carter who kept beautifully and is now all the bowlers' best friend. Indian Gym did provide resistance and didn’t give their wickets easily with one of their batsmen top scoring with 55. The gentleman in question also seemed to have a sportsmanship and personality bypass more to the embarrassment of his team mates and had several conversations with Tauseef before falling victim to another catch behind this time from Matt who had taken over the gloves. The other bowlers struggled a bit for consistency from the other end before Harry came on to wrap up the innings for the opposition to finish 164 all out after 41 overs.
Chasing 165 doesn’t sound overly challenging; however, TCC’s batting hasn’t been a core strength and Indian Gym certainly weren’t going to go down quietly. The father/son Khan partnership were sent out and faced a left armer bowler with a worse temper than Olly and Mr Popular at the other end. Tea was taken after 3 overs in which Olly had edged behind from a no-ball and the elder Khan was still on zero. Upon resumption, both batsmen got their heads down to see off the opening bowlers who bowled good lines. However, after the eldest Khan hit a boundary to the far side which turned out not to be a boundary and was gleefully runout by Mr Popular whilst both batsmen were having a mid-wicket chat TCC lost another wicket with Faz being clean bowled. Olly, however, kept his head and Dilan really dug in to consolidate and then attack. Dilan hit a few mighty blows before getting out LBW for a really good 22 made in a tricky situation and Jag took over with positive intent. Olly reached another 50 with a highlight being 4 boundaries in one over all from classic cricket shots before playing on to be warmly applauded by both sides (bar one individual). Jag put on a quick 28 with some classic drives and Shazum hitting some big blows until Jag ignored the key instruction of “no singles” and was duly run out. Archie came in and with Indian Gym really keeping it tight, Shazam sportingly retired (28) to let Dan Carter enter the fray. Archie hit a lovely boundary off his legs and Dan then hit a wonder cover drive for 4 to give TCC the win.
Author: Jamie Khan