Scorecard

St Albans Cricket Club Sunday 2nd XI v Aldenham CC on Sun 17 May 2026 at 1pm
St Albans Cricket Club Won by 122 runs

Match report PK couldn’t do it. So, what’s the only natural course of action? Run off to get married or some such rubbish and leave captaincy in the two most capable sets of hands this club’s ever seen.

This weekend saw our beloved Sunday 2XI play host to Aldenham CC: we were hungry for our first win of the 2026 season, and we had a point to prove. In the absence of Captain PK, authority was distributed between our two co-captains for the week: Ciarán Walsh and Andy Wright, both of whom saw fit to stay out until an ungodly hour the night prior and could still feel the effects of the Jolly Sailor and Veeda. No one does it quite like them. Wright conducted the toss, insisting the night prior that he’d prefer to bowl first if he won the toss, not realising he would be in no mood to field quite so early in the day. He won said toss and relented, opting to bat first to try and recover a bit more. Walsh was relieved, being in the same boat, but Wright looked him dead in the eye and said “no rest for you Walshy, stick your pads on, you’re opening with Moksy.” At least Wrighty did Walsh a favour in negotiating a reduced 35 over game in the hopes of beating the hangover (the hangover remains distinctly undefeated).

Thus, Walsh and Moksudul ‘Moksy’ Islam strapped on their armour and sauntered/ambled on to the square. Moksy looked in fine touch from Ball Juan, seeing himself in safely in the hope of ending his personal run drought. Walsh survived a couple of overs, managing to burgle a couple of singles before nailing one straight at midwicket, departing for 2. Our next three bats came and went alarmingly quickly, with Ungy ‘Promise’ Jones, Jude Berry and Tawhid Ahmed each departing for 3, 3 and 0 respectively.

Walsh and Wright rubbed their foreheads in exasperation: “we were giving PK so much chat about how we’re gonna lead the team to their first 2026 victory, what’ve we got ourselves into, this is a bloody shambles.” Fear not, boys: we’ve got guns in the shed yet. While Moksy was motoring his way to the 50 milestone, Ben ‘Biceps’ Hingston made himself known to the opposition. Biceps played a solid innings, batting carefully, dispatching the ball with venom and authority when offered the chance. He absolutely leathered a fair few directly towards various fielders, finding the boundary rope only once before a full toss went crashing into his stumps. Ben returned to the changing rooms for a respectable 19, making way for overseas unprofessional Charlie ‘Chaz’ Ferguson to take up arms.

Chaz batted with tact and controlled aggression, reaching the boundary rope with ease and amassing a solid total in a frighteningly short amount of time. Meanwhile, Moksy was really opening up: having boomed several maximums, he finally reached the century, raising the bat to raucous applause and then rocking said bat in his arms as if it were a baby. Unsure how I feel about football-esque celebrations in Sunday friendly cricket, but I’m here for it, keep up the good work Moksy. Our centurion retired, allowing co-captain Wright to put himself on the radar. Wrighty and Chaz went on to see who could race to the 50 milestone first, both lads offering almost no chances to the bowlers and inflating our total even further. Chaz eventually reached the milestone, with Wrighty running out of balls and finding himself stranded on 49* in a clear attempt at classic jug avoidance. Our frustrated number 9, Pelham, had spent the last 3 overs getting pad rash and trying to wheedle Walsh into retiring one of the boys early: “I want to bat too skip, he’s a bloody paid professional, does he really NEED to farm runs in a Sunday friendly?” Thankfully, Walsh didn’t care about Pelham’s plight: better luck next week.

Come teatime, our total was set at an impressive 258. A fantastic effort from everyone with the bat, even if Wrighty had miscounted his personal score and walked a single to get to 49 when he had more than enough time to run a double to reach the actual milestone. Idiot.

Following a good feed, Walsh and Wright threw the new ball to Chaz and resident Sunday gun Altaf ‘Daddy’ Hussain, marking the beginning of our all-out pace attack. Daddy drew first blood from the pavilion end, finding the gap in the opener’s defence to clean bowl him for a measly 2 runs. Meanwhile, Chaz caused chaos from the Knill-Jones end, his raw pace and quick spin proving too much for the oppo: he went on to claim 3 wickets, clean bowling two of them and the third seeing keeper Hingston take a solid catch from behind the stumps. During this time, Promise and Hingston facilitated a nifty run out, piling on the pressure even more. The two bowlers did a commendable job of restricting an already intimidating RRR, before passing over their duties to Pelham and youngster Zac Johnson.

Our wily off-spinners took to the task with reckless abandon: Zac bowled an overall lovely spell, doing an excellent job of understanding what kind of deliveries the batter preferred and adjusting his bowling accordingly. He was unfortunate not to take a wicket, but established himself very well as a mature bowler with an understanding of the context of the game. Pelham found more success from his end: having flown back from Turkey the night prior and heroically stepping in as a like-for-like replacement for drop out Saunders, he started his spell in perhaps the most baffling way I’ve ever seen. His first two deliveries were a ball that the umpire was presumably paid off to not call a wide, followed by one that didn’t even land on the square, before the third delivery which was straight and true as an arrow, castling the batter. He tightened things up even further, taking a further two wickets thanks to a firm hold from Moksy at mid-on (he does it all!), followed by a panicked caught and bowled wicket. The abject terror in Pelham’s eyes when he realised the ball was coming his way was plain for all to see, but hey, the scorebook says ‘wicket’.

Zac and Pelham retired, making way for Berry and Walsh. Berry only had time to bowl one over of some lovely seam, while Walsh had clearly had enough of cricket for one day. Evidently wanting to get in the bar ASAP and having zero regard for “giving the younger players a chance”, he bowled a 3 ball spell, being a dot and two successive wickets to bring the game to a close, decisively in favour of the Saints. Three balls, two wickets and no runs conceded: Walsh truly is God’s gift to cricket.

A rousing victory, made all the sweeter by the prospect of rubbing it in PK’s nose for years to come, given it was the team’s first win of the season and it just so happened to be while PK was absent, as he somehow decided his wedding was more important than the Sunday 2XI. Fret not, dear readers: WalshWrightBall will always be here to save the day. In all seriousness, it was a lovely day out against a friendly opposition, with excellent individual performances contributing to a well-earned win. Next week sees the now annual Saints Derby: given that traitor Tom Hadden has already poached both Hingston and Walsh for the occasion, it should be a good one…

Fineable Moments:

PK for prioritising his wedding day over his 3rd consecutive Sunday friendly game.

Zac for taking an unbelievably good catch, diving like a salmon and making the rest of us feel inadequate.

Pelham for somehow going deaf in Turkey, not realising his captains had been shouting at him to change his fielding position for a good 2 minutes.

Walsh for getting out and deciding to go for a ten minute nap on a sofa in the bar, learning nothing from having been photographed doing the exact same thing the night prior.

Andy Melling for refusing to play, yet turning up to watch most of the game regardless.

St Albans Cricket Club Sunday 2nd XI Batting
Player Name RunsMB4s6sSRCtStRo
extras
TOTAL :
4nb 12w 12b 1lb 
for 5 wickets
29
258		        
Moksudul Islam Retired Not Out  100 79 15 3 126.58 1
Ciarán Walsh ct Rajendran 2 8 25.00
Ungy Jones lbw Pandya 3 10 30.0
Jude Berry b Khaliq 3 3 100
Tawhid Ahmed lbw Khaliq 0 6 0
Ben Hingston b Khaliq 19 25 1 76.00 1 1
Charlie Ferguson Not Out  53 40 9 132.50
Andy Wright Not Out  49 37 7 132.43
George Pelham   1
Zac (Isaac) Johnson   1
Md Altaf Husain  

Aldenham CC Bowling

Player nameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
D. Rajendran7.0136136.005.14
K. Pandya6.0048148.008.00
U. Khaliq7.0135311.675.00
K. Pichandi4.003800.009.50
A. Hamza7.006900.009.86
D. Pandit4.001900.004.75

Aldenham CC Batting
Player name RMB4s6sSR
extras
TOTAL :
 
for 10 wickets
0
136 (28.3 overs)		     
D. Sharma b Ferguson 27
U. Khaliq b Hussain 2
J. Pandit ct b. Ferguson ct. Hingston 16
M. Vylur run out Hingston/Jones 20
K. Pichandi b Ferguson 7
J. Abraham ct b. Pelham ct. Islam 16
S. Barnett b Pelham 0
A. Hamza ct b. Pelham ct. Pelham 2
D. Pandit ct b. Walsh ct. Johnson 25
D. Rajendran Not Out  15
K. Pandya lbw Walsh 0

St Albans Cricket Club Sunday 2nd XI Bowling

Player NameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Md Altaf Husain7.0131131.004.43
Charlie Ferguson7.0042314.006.00
Zac (Isaac) Johnson6.004100.006.83
George Pelham7.031234.001.71
Jude Berry1.00800.008.00
Ciarán Walsh0.30020.000.00