The rain held off and Dodgers assembled early at Chiswick for an August showdown with the competitive Kai Dragons. Dodgers nominally won the toss and agreed to bat first.
Mehboob and Mike opened our account but neither managed to profit in the face of the accurate Dragons bowling attack. Mehboob fell to a straight one and NJ, replacing him, also found the batting hard going. Once he too had been removed cheaply, it was down to Jatinder to inject some acceleration into our innings, and before long he was finding the boundary with some excellent drives and cuts. Both he and Mike retired on 25*, but by the time Jack and David came to the crease we were already approaching the last couple of overs. Jack hit out nicely, David was unlucky to be caught in the deep and Sohail came in to crack 5 off his two balls. Despite this last flurry, we had been pinned back by the quality Dragons bowling and ended with just 92 for 3 off our twenty overs. Given that we were 36 for 2 after the first ten, this was a good recovery, but we would need to be at our very best to defend such a low total.
Sadly, we were not at our best. The Dragons opened strongly and were well ahead of the rate from the start, finding boundaries with greater ease than we had and running strongly between the wickets as well. Although we managed to slow their run rate once the opener Innes had retired unbeaten, any hope of rescuing the game had evaporated by the half way mark, when they were already on 65. Top scorer by a long chalk, however, was Wides, which notched up an impressive 39 in the space of 17 overs. There was a feeling that the Dragons umpires had been watching the Hundred and might have been applying the leg side rule a bit strictly, but in the end it wouldn't have mattered. We were well beaten in what had been an enjoyable game, so we repaired to the bar to lick our wounds.
Man of the Match votes: Jatinder 8, Mike 1, Sohail 1, John 1
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Dodgers looking good (before the game at least) |
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