Scorecard

St Albans Cricket Club 3XI v Hitchin III on Sat 20 May 2023 at 13:00
St Albans Cricket Club Won by 10 runs

Match report
After two frustrating cancellations to start the season, a 3XI itching to get going under their new regime hosted Hitchin III at the home of cricket, SLCG.

None were more keen than new skipper West, who played it a bit too far on the safe side with his meet up timings. With the ground set up by 11:45, a period of mental preparation followed. Tooley was disappointed he hadn’t driven to the ground, otherwise he surely would have retreated to his front seat for a short kip. Manny was particularly confused at the sight of cones and flexi stumps decorating the outfield upon his arrival. But after the high quality warm up, bar Murph’s slip catching practice, West won the toss and elected to bat. An ideal result on a pitch likely to not improve throughout the days play.

Manny and Street started things off, the latter looking in assured touch until an unfortunate case of early season running, which was punished with a direct hit. West joined Manny for the rebuild.

The two faired well, amassing a 50 partnership until Manny feathered one through to the keeper off Hitchin spinner Clarke on the eve of drinks. Wilton’s stay was brief, playing for spin that never came, with Lawrence joining and dealing with the Hattrick ball.

Lawrence and West batted well until an all too familiar dismissal for the skipper, a nicely timed but check lofted drive not quite going over the rope and ending his stay for 33 when trying to up the rate.

At 84-4, batsman came and went, with the majority giving their wickets away softly. Murph looked in fine touch up until chipping one to cover, Tooley went 4 and out after getting a “bit too confident”, Sandeep opened his SACC account with a 6 but didn’t press on, and the less said about Joe Button’s baseball innings the better. All the while, Lawrence had been hitting to good effect with his knock of 38 crucial to us reaching 149. A defendable total at SLCG going off past experience, but Saints were left wondering what could’ve been given the number of wickets gifted to the opposition, mostly to their skipper who walked off with a haul of 7 - not a bad start for him his year.

The opening pair of new signing Sandeep, and Button were straight into their work in the defence, Sandeep particularly testing to their openers. He made the first breakthrough, with Button following suit soon after - both batsman chopping on.
Walker was the first change, and throughout his spell he gave nothing to the Hitchin batters. Returning a match winning spell of 8-3-13-2.
At the other end, Utti got through 2 overs before his knee stifled him and confined him to gully for the rest of the innings. But in those he took the prized wicket of what looked like a key batsman for Hitchin.

Tooley then took the ball and should have added another, with Tom dropping an easy one at midwicket. Joe Button with some great work at the fine leg boundary added a run out, with plaudits to Lawrence for his work behind the stumps. Going into drinks, we had them 40-4.

A partnership then proceeded to put some pressure on to the Saints after drinks, and our response could have been better in truth. Within a period of 5 overs we’d given them a sniff, and forced us to manage proceedings more tightly. Murphy bowled well in this period, with West and Wilton taking good catches out in the deep. The latter being particularly key to ending Hitchin’s realistic hopes of getting a result.

We ran out the game as winners by 10 runs. A tighter margin than we all would have liked, having the opposition at 71-7 at one stage. We could have batted them out of the game, which on reflection was the area in which there was the most room for improvement. Nevertheless, 30 points is 30 points. A solid first outing for the 3s this year, and a performance we can build on. On to next week against Redbourn to continue building momentum.


St Albans Cricket Club 3XI Batting
Player Name RunsMB4s6sSRCtStRo
extras
TOTAL :
2w 1b 1lb 
for 10 wickets
4
149		        
Nauman Nisar ct S Gadsden b J Clarke 26 61 1 42.62
Samuel Street run out  (S Perrin) 8 12 1 66.67
Zach West ct S Perrin b J Clarke 33 52 5 63.46 1
Tom Wilton lbw J Clarke 0 1 0 1
James Lawrence ct S Mayes b J Clarke 38 28 5 1 135.71
Adam Murphy ct S Mayes b J Clarke 10 16 1 62.50
Richard O'Toole ct A Beaton b J Clarke 4 3 1 133.33 1
Sandeep Singh ct A Beaton b G Singh 11 12 1 91.67
Joe Button ct S Perrin b J Clarke 5 9 1 55.56 1 1
Uttam Vijender ct J Clarke b S Perrin 10 23 1 43.48 1
Andrew Walker Not Out  0 11 0

Hitchin III Bowling

Player nameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Simon Mayes7.021800.002.57
Gavin Bidgood8.001900.002.37
Andy Beaton8.004400.005.50
Jamie Clarke8.014276.005.25
Gurvinder Singh4.0113113.003.25
Scott Perrin3.0011111.003.67

Hitchin III Batting
Player name RMB4s6sSR
extras
TOTAL :
5w 2b  
for 9 wickets
7
139 (40.0 overs)		     
Tim Porter b S Singh 0 9 0
Gurvinder Singh ct J Button b U Vijender 16 36 1 44.44
Russell Hann b J Button 6 28 21.43
Tyler Uys run out  (J Button) 13 28 2 46.43
Simon Mayes b A Walker 6 20 30.0
Stuart Gadsden ct U Vijender b A Walker 1 4 25.00
Alex Stoner ct Z West b A Murphy 16 29 3 55.17
Scott Perrin Not Out  53 58 7 91.38
Gavin Bidgood run out (R O'Toole) 15 18 2 83.33
Jamie Clarke ct T Wilton b A Murphy 3 6 50.0
Andy Beaton Not Out  3 5 60.0

St Albans Cricket Club 3XI Bowling

Player NameOversMaidensRunsWicketsAverageEconomy
Sandeep Singh8.0125125.003.12
Joe Button6.0013113.002.17
Andrew Walker8.031326.501.62
Uttam Vijender2.00818.004.00
Richard O'Toole7.002400.003.43
Adam Murphy7.0038219.005.43
Zach West2.001600.008.00

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