Date: 17th April, 2021
Venue: Bushy Park
It’s quite unusual for the 4th XI to have pre-season friendlies, especially in April. Normally this is simply something only the 1s or 2s do. However, I did manage to persuade Hampton Hill to bring a team to Bushy Park to give us some practice. The team they turned up with, however, didn’t turn out to be quite strong enough, as we easily recorded a victory by 161 runs.
Put into bat, we lost a couple of early wickets, before Faz and I solidified the innings to an extent by getting us to 136-4. After that, it was really Eddie Clark (80) and a very busy Rakesh “Rocky” Khade (86 with a SR of 195!) who racked up most of our runs with a 135 run partnership as we posted 290/7 off our 40 overs.
Hampton Hill never looked like getting anywhere near our total in response, as we easily skittled them out for 129, whilst using ten bowlers, including myself bowling a single maiden over before I quit with my economical bowling figures firmly in the book. Wickets were pretty even shared.
Not the most challenging of contests, but at least we got a game in.
Author: Matt O’Toole