Alpha Too Good This Time

by Apoorv Jaitly

With the Wombats set to play their third match of the league and eager to open their account, the team received terrible news right on the eve of the match. The Wombats legend, Richard Laidler, had passed away due to his long illness. The feeling within the team was to win the match and dedicate the victory to Laids, as we fondly used to called him. Coming off a huge win in the T20 format, the Wombats believed that they could hit this one out of the park. The start of the day wasn’t the brightest with a key member of the 11 down with flu and two others running late. Nevertheless, the wombats were out on a mission to get that elusive win for Laids.

Prior to the start of play, a small ceremony was held to honour Laids. Both the teams observed a minute of  silence in his memory and the Wombats sported black armbands for their teammate. Team Alpha won the toss and decided to field first. Richie and Patmore opened the innings for the Wombats. In this high-pressure game, Wombats lost their skipper in the 5th over courtesy a debatable LBW dismissal. Thanks to Richie, the Wombats gained some traction in the game, but soon he too fell after hitting consecutive boundaries. With Richie too going out to a controversial call, it prompted the skipper to shout, “Do you have a train to miss?” To the umpires from the boundary and kicking a water bottle to the top of Mt. Fuji. Coincidentally or not, that was the last LBW dismissal of the innings.

With some tight display of bowling by the Alpha, a particular left arm tweaker Dhaka bowling a fair share of dot balls with other bowlers bowling around the pressure created by him. Run rate started to dip and a couple of wickets too went down due to this pressure. This prompted Dean to drop anchor. With Dean at one end, his partners found it difficult to occupy the crease at the other end. In the meantime, Patmore was seen rolling his arm over in the nets and soon realised why he chose wicket keeping with his deliveries reaching the other end in 3 bounces. It was finally Vig, who together with Dean stitched together an important partnership. After the fall of Vig, Dean followed suit which lead to the Wombats ending their innings prematurely at 152 in 35 overs, still leaving 30 more balls to play.

After the batsman found it tough to score, the onus was on the bowlers to win the match for them, and they didn’t disappoint. The opening spell of Vig saw the batsmen scoring most of the runs through edges to third man. AJ, as usual, kept it tight at the other end. The Wombats could only get their first breakthrough in the 10th over. Then soon after, Patmore sent the other opener back as well, through the display of brilliance behind the stumps. With 3 wickets in succession, the wombats were back in the hunt. Some fiery bowling coupled with tidy fielding made the scoring difficult for the opposition. The 150 odd target now seemed to be somewhere near 250 odd runs. There was no drop in intensity by the team with the infielders chirping and the outfielders making sure that there were no easy boundaries. Debutant Anthony, in particular, made it his mission that if the batsmen wanted runs, they had to run for it. The 4th wicket partnership stretched to 136. With only 17 runs left in the bank for the Wombats to turn the match in their favour, Vignesh provided a late burst accounting for 3 desperate wickets. But alas, 152 turned out to be too low of a target to defend. Even though the Wombats didn’t win the match, they made sure it wasn’t a dead fixture by any means. Laids would’ve been proud of the effort. We hope wherever he is, he’s proud of our efforts and would’ve wanted us to do one better next time. Man of the Match award went to Vignesh Bandi.

Catches

• Skipper Alex Patmore had a very tidy day behind the stumps, taking two knicks behind off Vig’s bowling and an excellent stumping off a pearler from Dean.
• Richie snaffling two in the slips, one high and one low, from Vig’s aggressive spell. Proper cricket!
• Richie taking one at mid-wicket from a full bunger. Less proper cricket!

Dropped Catches

• James “the Hologram” Samarji dropping one low and hard at extra cover.
• Luke dropped a skier, running in from deep mid-off. He did everything right, called loudly, ran in, got to the ball, but just couldn’t hold the catch while diving forward.
• Santosh crocodile hands at extra cover, bounced right out.

Quotes

• Oceans sharing some of his favourite one liners with lads en route home: “The great thing about Paedophile jokes is, they never grow old…”
• “I feel like quitting the 40 overs and only Playing T20…” Luke after his 3rd consecutive JCL duck.
• Richie: “Managed to close the hot gates just in time” — 300 reference to Leonidas look-alike Deano, who just avoided taking one in the Spartans. Good chat!

Great Moments in Sport

• New Wombat Anthony “Oceans” Huynh racing around the boundaries to cut of countless boundaries throughout the entire innings.
• Dean Abbott, seeing off the dangerous Dhaka and anchoring the innings with a patient 32 from 88 balls.
• Great enthusiasm and energy in the field from debutant Apoorv, who kept on chatting away at the batsmen even after he ran out of things to say.
• Vig must have set a new club record by bowling nearly all of his deliveries on the off side and allowing a 7-2 field placement.
• Black armbands honouring Laids.
• Defending 150, great bowling effort by AJ, Vig, Dean who were making the batsmen work hard for runs. Many of those runs came in edges.

Dummy Spits

• Patmore venting his frustration from the sidelines at the umpires after two poor LBW decisions, yelling “Have you got a train to catch!?” before kicking a nearby water bottle into next week.

Golden Thong Nominations

• AJ wanting to bowl 8 overs but asked to be taken off after 4 as he was tired.
• James Samarji having a psychotic episode on the boundary, celebrating an imaginary wicket from his own bowling and celebrating, all this a few balls before a wombats defeat.