Sharks 2nd XI vs Sano @ Sano1
13th July – By Koji Watanabe
With dense clouds, we never really saw the sun the whole day, but the weather held up for us. The heat came back with the thick air, but it was at least a respite from continuous rainy weekends.
Before the match, everyone was looking forward to a good day of cricket on the first day of three-day weekend, scoffing at people spending hours in a traffic jam in order to travel somewhere far.
Sharks won the toss and elected to bat. Here’s the highlights of the match.
Batting
The auctioneer, CT, offered the batting order up for a bid, and Anton and Asala won the opening duo. Anton practised his solid stance and was defending from the bowling attack, but Anton scooped the ball up and it fell in the hands of Yuki at Mid off. 1-9.
Ash Thurgate in at 3 and he immediately looked assured offering a solid defence to the bowler’s questioning line and length.
The Asala-Ash partnership worked the ball into Sano’s gaps, and continued with singles and a few boundary shots. We hoped that the pair could continue building runs, but Asala’s batting stint came to an end on a swinging ball. It was 2-23 off 10 overs. The run rate started slowing down even more after this moment.
Sunny came in to cast light on his batting debut. By that time, Ash had geared up his aggressiveness and tried to drive the ball away. Sano’s bowler did not miss the chance and tempted Ash to bring the ball up high. and he got caught. 3-40. Mairaj joined Sunny, but he got out LBW. 4-41 off 14.
Soon after Koji joined, Sunny was caught after milking a single. 5-41. Now, KB marched in to punish Sano. He never played a stupid shot unlike Koji who played an indecisive mixed action of defensive and cut shot to get caught and bowled. 6-41. KB’s patience never wears thin, and he ground out 27 dot balls before accidentally edging through gully for a cheeky single. He survived till the end of the innings.
Molloy was premeditated and stable after seeing us falling, and he was constantly adding runs to Sharks’ total. With KB, the run rate began to pick up, but suddenly, Molloy got bowled out. 7-55. Arman, who came in after Molloy, got out caught. 8-64.
The two veterans, KB and CT met together at the pitch. We were breathlessly awaiting our counterattack, but CT was bowled and Sharks got all out for 9-79.
Bowling
Sharks opened with Ash from the bank end. It was his birthday and we sang Happy Birthday to him in the field. After Ash was given a break after the first over and changed the bowling end, he sank one of them with an LBW.
KB proved that spin would work well with today’s Sano team and he kept on confusing the batsman, getting one out caught by CT off a top edge! What a catch!
Anton stepped in to feed the opponent with more spin but got clobbered, but it was Molloy who brought us the second wicket from an ex-baseball player, who was swinging hard for the boundary. The batsman stepped forward to smash the ball only to find his bat slicing through the air. He found himself outside of his ground and stumped by CT.
If Arman had been able to have a go at more than one over, he might’ve been rev up and shown his good bowling. Mairaji came in as our last bowler, but Sano reached our target.
We lost the game, but Sharks fought hard against the opponent, and it was good cricket all around! Thanks for the match to the new look Sano team and also to the excellent Rising Stars umpires who did a great job.
