Scorecard

St Albans Cricket Club 3XI v West Herts CC 3rd XI on Sat 02 Aug 2025 at 13:00
St Albans Cricket Club Lost by 93 runs

Match report Into the business end of the season we ventured, and owing to an excellent club social the weekend before, the skipper’s takeaways from the previous matchday were no longer his 30 over strop and the demoralising loss, but instead, a newfound fear of club strength margaritas and the £100 meat voucher in his wallet. Things were looking up.

As with any good early season promotion push, we now found ourselves middle of the pack and in last chance saloon against 2nd placed West Herts, who we’d already conquered earlier this season. Anticipation of a well fought match against another strong Herts league club was brewing, with confidence high owing to the strength of the playing XI assembled.

West is a sh*t tosser and West Herts called correctly. Bracing himself for the inevitable news that they fancied a crack at our top order on a green squidgy seamer with overcast conditions, West was stunned to hear they wanted to bat. Thanks championship.

Wannabee 2XI seamer Banksy and actual 2XI seamer Winners took the new ball duties. Both of their first pairs of overs indicated a changing of the guard in this department. Winners forgot where the crease line was, and seasoned his copious no balls with a peppering of leg side wides. Winners’ shock that leg side wides were now in force in 7 West was evident, but given he plays most of his cricket in 3A this shouldn’t of been much of an adjustment for him. Banks on the other hand was straight into his work, castling both openers with vicious in-duckers. Go on the boy.

Banks then decided to rough up the new bat with a short one that forced him off retired hurt. This was instantly followed by a police helicopter circling overhead and a police car speeding into SLCG – impressive response time from local law enforcement. After some negotiation, Banks escaped with no charge and a verbal warning.

With not much else happening for the remainder of their opening spells, Telkman was introduced to afford Winners a change of ends. This helped his rhythm, and he regularly beat the bat, with a loopy chance perhaps not made the most of in the field in his last set. Telkman was relatively tight but unable to find a breakthrough, with the early wickets inciting caution from the West Herts batters. The scoreboard was still ticking along nicely for them though, owing to the ridiculous number of extras – more on that later.

Normally, West would have now turned to his evergreen all-rounder, Tooley, for some much-needed control and poles. As he was otherwise engaged watching a pantomime with his friends, Ash and Howeson were called upon as apt, suitably aged replacements. Ash was the pick of the bowlers, returning 2-19 from his full allocation, the first a much-needed wicket gratefully pouched by West at mid-off. Howeson struck in the next over, which commenced a mini collapse for West Herts as they lost 4-25 to leave them 142-6 after 30 overs. The 6th wicket came with West charging in from mid-off to take a smart grab at Howse’s feet at the non-striker’s end, as his bowler refused to entertain the prospect of moving 5 yards to catch it himself. It’s hopefully the first and last time that West finds himself kneeling in front of a teammate clutching on to balls that he has no reasonable claim to.

By now, the extras really were adding up. The landmark 50 was jovially cheered from the opposition, and despite some good clean up work from the finisher Witty and Banksy and a run out from the skipper, West Herts were undoubtedly pretty pleased with their total of 195 at halfway as they were bowled out in the 39th over. The fact that this total only included 135 runs off the bat was disappointing to say the least.

West and Fozan tackled the pretty sharp Sri Lankan international opening bowler, and his rather pedestrian partner in comparison at the other end, who eventually accounted for both of them. After a phantom nick against the quick, the West Herts cordon directed a torrent of abuse at the skipper for not walking for a ball he didn’t hit, but despite constant reminders that he was on his second life, he couldn’t make it count for his team. Departing for his average knock of 16 to continue his lack of contribution with the bat this season, he joined Fozan in the hutch who may have got a tad unlucky with an LBW call the over before.

Before West had neatly assembled his kit back in his bag, Ash had been and gone for a rare duck. In truth, there isn’t much else to report from our chase attempt apart from Jimmy’s masterclass on playing short-pitched bowling off the SLCG pitch and the fact he finally surpassed his bogey number of 23, carding a well made 24 to top score the Saints innings.

Saints all out for 102. Promotion hopes in tatters. Attention quickly pivoting to the fact that the 3XI had better pull their finger out to stave of relegation. An important few weeks lie ahead.

West Herts CC 3rd XI Batting
Player name RunsMB4s6sSR
extras
TOTAL :
7nb 48w 5b  
for 10 wickets
60
195 (38.2 overs)		     
Zankar Shah b  T Banks 0 8 0
Ben Greenstreet b  T Banks 0 1 0
Yaamir Khurana run out  (Z West) 35 58 5 60.34
Ebrahim Raja ct  Z West b A Dean 51 96 7 53.12
Het Shah ct  M Howeson b M Howeson 24 33 4 72.73
Mudassir Raja b  A Dean 1 5 20.0
Faisal Rehman ct  Z West b M Howeson 0 7 0
Kamal Shah Akbari Zadran ct  T Rayden b T Banks 19 18 4 105.56
Rajen Gurung b  T Banks 0 6 0
Josh Stevens b  E Witty 4 4 1 100
Valance Jayasuriya Not Out  1 2 50.0

St Albans Cricket Club 3XI Bowling

Player NameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Jacob Winfield8.003400.004.25
Thomas Banks6.2045411.257.11
Jamie Telkman6.002900.004.83
Matt Howeson7.0046223.006.57
Ashish Dean8.011929.502.37
Ethan Witty3.0017117.005.67

St Albans Cricket Club 3XI Batting
Player Name RMB4s6sSRCatchesStumpingsRun outs
extras
TOTAL :
1nb 19w 1lb 
for 10 wickets
21
102		        
Zach West ct  K Shah Akbari Zadran b J Stevens 16 31 3 51.61 2
Fozan Ahmed lbw  J Stevens 0 7 0
Matt Howeson b  V Jayasuriya 16 40 1 40.0 1
Ashish Dean ct  Y Khurana b J Stevens 0 7 0
James Rosson ct  B Greenstreet b V Jayasuriya 24 39 3 1 61.54
James Lawrence b  K Shah Akbari Zadran 0 10 0
Thomas Rayden st  B Greenstreet b R Gurung 2 13 15.38 1
Jacob Winfield b  M Raja 13 21 3 61.90
Ethan Witty b  M Raja 7 16 1 43.75
Thomas Banks Not Out  2 6 33.33
Jamie Telkman ct  V Jayasuriya b M Raja 1 7 14.29

West Herts CC 3rd XI Bowling

Player nameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Valance Jayasuriya8.0222211.002.75
Josh Stevens8.012337.672.88
Rajen Gurung8.0227127.003.38
Kamal Shah Akbari Zadran6.0223123.003.83
Mudassir Raja1.40331.001.80
Faisal Rehman1.00300.003.00

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