Scorecard

St Albans Cricket Club 4XI v Berkhampstead III on Sat 21 Jul 2018 at 1pm
St Albans Cricket Club Won by 1 run

Match report The 4th XI were at home against Berks III’s at SLCG. Against all expectations the wicket had a good covering of grass despite the continued sunny, dry spell of weather. St Albans won the toss and elected to have a bat.

Faced with a tight opening spell of bowling, openers Andy Knill-Jones and Faz Nisar patiently set about establishing a decent platform. AKJ kept the score board ticking over by punishing the odd bad ball. With a fast outfield, anything beating the fielders resulted in welcome boundaries. Faz was first to go in the 10th over with the score on 39. This brought to the wicket the in-form Najib Khan who calmly played himself in. He survived a couple of confident LBW shouts and was ‘caught’ off a no-ball but was importantly still there at tea where we were well placed at 80 for 1.

AKJ went LBW (triggered by Hay) for a very well-played 45. This brought Alfie Button to the wicket. He nudged and nurdled his way to 9 (all in singles) but rotated the strike well to get Najib on strike. Attempting another sharp single Alfie was run out. Despite the confident appeal not going Berko’s way, Alfie walked as he said he was so far short of his crease it would have been wrong not to go!! Wilf Rush departed quickly, bowled by their spinner who got some extravagant turn, pitching one on leg and hitting the top of off.

Najib had continued his rich vein of form, but unfortunately was out caught for 69 in the 31st over trying to up the run rate. This stalled the scoring rate but contributions from Ralfe (16) and a great cameo from Joshua Mulvaney (14*) got us to 179/7 at the end of our 40 overs.

Mulvaney had played some quality shots without reward due to picking out a fielder, but the boundary he hit off the last ball of the innings would prove to be crucial in the final outcome of the match. We had a defendable total, despite being 20 runs short of what we ideally wanted.

The Berko innings got off to a steady start. Their openers found it difficult to get the miserly Hay and Winfield away, the odd boundary coming as a result of desperation to keep the scoreboard ticking over rather than quality shots. After 12 overs Berko had reached 48/0 with both bowlers going unrewarded after good opening spells.

The breakthrough came in the 13th over. David Ashton came on and pace off the ball provided a different challenge to their young opener. Given not out off a clear stumping early in the over he was out LBW a few balls later. Alfie Button had come on at the other end. After a good first over he pulled up lame with a bad back half way through his second over.

Josh Mulvaney replaced him and together with Ashton really tied the batsmen down. Their first four overs between them had combined figures of no runs for 1 wicket! Both bowled their allocation of overs unchanged. Ashton, who grabbed a couple of good caught and bowled, finished with excellent figures of 3/32. Mulvaney who was excellent during the time
they were looking to increase their run rate only went for 2 boundaries in his 8 overs. He fully deserved the wicket he got and finished with fabulous figures of 1/24.

Nadeem Arif had come on and proceeded to tie up one end as well. Berko had upped their run rate and were always more or less on target but never managed to get well ahead of where they needed to be. They were helped by the odd misfield but we crucially held on to catches when they came our way. Excellent catches from Mulvaney and Button meant Berko lost wickets every time they were gaining some momentum.

With 5 overs to go Berko only needed 27 and looked like they might get over the line, but a maiden over from Nadeem put the pressure firmly back on them. Faz Nisar chipped in with 2 wickets in an over and a tight penultimate over from Winfield left them needing 13 off the final over, bowled by Nadeem. Four runs off the first ball made things interesting. A couple of 2’s, a no ball and a wicket meant that it came down to them needing 4 runs to win off the last ball.

With the field set as wide as possible we defended the boundary and ran a batsmen out attempting the 3rd run which would have levelled the scores. Victory by 1 run.

Overall a really good competitive game of cricket played in great spirits by both teams. The third win in a row or the 4th XI keeps the momentum going and pushes them up to almost mid table in the league.

St Albans Cricket Club 4XI Batting
Player Name RunsMB4s6sSRCtStRo
extras
TOTAL :
1nb 2w 2b 5lb 
for 7 wickets
10
179		        
Andrew Knill-Jones Lbw  45
Faizan Nisar Lbw  5
Najib Khan Caught  68 1
Alfie Button Run out  9 1
Wilf Rush Bowled  0
Kevin Ralfe Caught  16 1 1
Joshua Mulvaney Not Out  14 1
Nadeem Arif Caught  1
Tim Winfield Not Out  2
Christian Hay  
David Ashton   2 1

Berkhampstead III Bowling

Player nameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
No records to display.

Berkhampstead III Batting
Player name RMB4s6sSR
extras
TOTAL :
1nb 8w 8lb 
for 9 wickets
17
178 (40.0 overs)		     
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

St Albans Cricket Club 4XI Bowling

Player NameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Christian Hay6.002900.004.83
Tim Winfield7.022000.002.86
Alfie Button2.001600.008.00
David Ashton8.0332310.674.00
Joshua Mulvaney8.0224124.003.00
Nadeem Arif6.0023211.503.83
Faizan Nisar3.0020210.006.67

  • Umpire :
    All of us
  • Scorer :
    All of us