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St Albans Cricket Club 3XI v Northwood Town CC, Middlesex 2nd XI on Sat 28 Jun 2025 at 13:00
St Albans Cricket Club Lost by 8 wickets

Match report With confidence high for their second game at the home of cricket in as many weeks, and the 3XI on somewhat of a roll having not lost since the first game of the season, their matchup against Northwood would turn out to be nothing short of a reality check.

Alarm bells started ringing for West when he was scolded by the newly elected warm up coach Murph for being late for his own meet time, who in the same call made mention of a surprising state of the wicket, given the weather this past week. With West having taken up the offer of an unpaid apprenticeship as head of watering at SLCG, he duly soaked the wicket over the Thursday night, instead of the originally instructed Wednesday, in a bid to improve the playing conditions for his team on the weekend. Unfortunately, this backfired as it had not fully dried out – in his defence, the fact it rained on Thursday night likely didn’t help matters. Pudding is an apt description of the end result. Another administrative error by West must surely have the coup chat bubbling up amongst his ranks.

Winning the toss and bowling first would therefore be vital in order to get the best of both worlds with bat and ball, as it would be sure to dry out over the course of the day. Coin in the air. Heads called. Heads it fell. Saints batting first. Bollocks.

Ash and Deb took the stage, and after a positive start in the first 3 overs, the worst fears of a pending run out between the pair were realised. As Deb skied one in the ring, struggling to time the pace of the pitch as many a Saints batter would throughout the innings, the resulting dolly was comically dropped. But with Deb halfway down and Ash not in the picture, he was run out on his way back to safety.

West joined Ash to commence a rebuild, and both were watchful for the next 10 as they battled to get the total above 50. In the 16th over, Ash departed for a hard fought 27, which brought the first of last week’s bomb squad to the crease.

The so-called ‘bomb squad’ of Murray, Lawrence, Murph and Rayden had contributed 84 from 68 balls the previous week to see us to the win. Their collective contribution this week? 0 off 27. Quite the turnaround. Murph and Lawrence were a tad unlucky it must be said, with the former seeing two deliveries pitch in the same spot, one passing by his chest, the other bowling him. Lawrence being immediately categorised as a golfer after his first ball by the gobby square leg did give Tooley a chuckle, but the next ball saw him returning from his stint as umpire to get his pads on, as another short ball proved too difficult to time, and the catch was taken.

What was 57-2 was soon 76-6, with the 3s in dire straits. West eventually succumbed to another short delivery that he couldn’t say no to, despite his repeated warnings to Banksy to leave such balls well alone early on. His hard fought 39 not quite the skipper’s knock required, and the changing rooms were sensibly evacuated prior to his arrival.

Banksy, Tooley and JC did what they could to bump the total up past 100, with 116 all out reached with 5 overs to spare. Tooley stranded on 20*.

The less said about the ‘defence’ of this total the better. In truth, the Northwood batters made it look a different pitch, as they aggressively went at anything given the meagre target, and improved condition of the wicket.
The fielding at times was poor, with catches dropped and run out chances squandered. The vast majority of bowlers had their go, but before long there was no stopping the end result. Banks and Murph taking the consolation wickets in an 8-wicket drubbing, and the Last of the Summer Wine tour spared the grisly viewing as they turned up to see kitbags hitting the boots of the 3XI player’s cars.

One to forget this week, but luckily, they have the first-class playing facilities of Bushey to look forward to next week. Hooray, cricket!

Oh, my mistake. Bushey is a f***king sh*thole.

St Albans Cricket Club 3XI Batting
Player Name RunsMB4s6sSRCtStRo
extras
TOTAL :
3nb 5w 2b 1lb 
for 10 wickets
11
116
        
Ashish Dean b J Patel 27 53 3 50.94
Debshali Sinharoy run out  (J Rajani) 2 5 40.0
Zach West ct Unsure b A Rifat 39 54 4 72.22
Stuart Murray ct Unsure b A Rifat 0 3 0
James Lawrence ct Unsure b J Patel 0 4 0 1
Adam Murphy b J Patel 0 2 0
Thomas Rayden ct Unsure b A Rifat 0 20 0
Thomas Banks b K Puwar 9 35 2 25.71
Richard O'Toole Not Out  20 27 3 74.07
Joey Curran ct Unsure b K Puwar 8 7 1 114.29
Charles Smith b K Puwar 0 1 0

Northwood Town CC, Middlesex 2nd XI Bowling

Player nameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Deepak Raj8.013000.003.75
Jeet Rajani6.021700.002.83
Aashir Rifat8.022739.003.38
Jay Patel8.021836.002.25
Charlie Cadman3.001700.005.67
Krunal Puwar1.40431.332.40

Northwood Town CC, Middlesex 2nd XI Batting
Player name RMB4s6sSR
extras
TOTAL :
1nb 4w 3lb 
for 2 wickets
8
118 (15.0 overs)
     
Jay Patel b A Murphy 43 48 10 89.58
Bijendra Vaghela ct J Lawrence b T Banks 32 25 7 128.00
Harish Janardhanan Not Out  17 13 4 130.77
Deepak Raj Not Out  18 5 3 1 360.0
Tushar Shah  
Jeet Rajani  
Keeran Sudagaran  
Krunal Puwar  
Ravi Ramawat  
Charlie Cadman  
Aashir Rifat  

St Albans Cricket Club 3XI Bowling

Player NameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Joey Curran3.002100.007.00
Charles Smith4.002200.005.50
Richard O'Toole3.001900.006.33
Thomas Banks2.0119119.009.50
Adam Murphy2.0029129.0014.50
Zach West1.00500.005.00

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    Team