First League Win

WCC had a great day in the field during the league game against Zurich Royals. It was the first league win in almost a season and a half and it felt great to be back to winning ways in the longer format.

We lost the toss and duly put into bat by the opposition. Raj and Sanjeev opened the batting and gave us a good start at a healthy run rate. After Sanjeev got out, Pip and Raj carried on the good work before Raj was also out for a well made 28. Ex-Skipper Praful missed out on building on a solid platform when he was unfortunately out of the first ball he faced. With Gajan too falling cheaply, our team had a sense of deja vu creeping up of not being able to last close to 40 overs and folding cheaply. But this was a game where Tom stood up and showed us his batting skills. His past attempts at scoring runs were akin to his namesake cartoon character's attempts at catching Jerry. But on this day, runs flowed sweetly and along with Pip first and later with the lower order, he batted sensibly to make 24 most needed runs. After him, Waqar shepherded the tail well to take us to a score of 164 which was eminently defendable under the conditions. This was especially a good score considering the irritating appeals and delays caused due to constant field changes and internal squabbling from the opposition.

Post a nice lunch, we began our bowling with Sanjeev being successful off the very first over though it should be more Pip's wicket because of a stunning catch he took. While Sanjeev was showing exemplary control on one end and picked a couple of more wickets, things were horrendous from the other end. First, Hasta bowled a consistent line at the 15th leg stump and then Asghar and the usually accurate Rehman bowled huge wides on either side of the wicket although Asghar did pick a wicket, it was time for more discipline and we got that with Mahmood and Waqar bowling really well with miserly spells and perfect control. Wickets fell at regular intervals and Pip was brought on to inflict more damage to the Royals. Sanjeev came back to finish things off with two wickets taking his tally to five for the game. On the field, we took all our catches including the stunner from Pip and a show-off dive from Tom who had a rare bad day with the byes. It was a thorough performance except for the huge wides and lack of control from a few bowlers.

We hope this winning habit continues in the season in all forms of the game. A point to be noted is that this win was achieved despite the unlucky presence of our new club president, Mr. Dick Tayter!


Reporter: Hasta