Clapham Nomads v Barnes Occasionals - 9/9/18

For our last home match of the season, Nomads entertained our oldest cricketing friends Barnes Occasionals at a sunny but somehow still bleak Joseph Hood Rec.
Several of us (Emil, John and I) first met the Occasionals back in 1991 when we were all young (ish). I recently found a results list from the Open University cc who we used to play for and, to disprove that old cliche, "the good old days" found that we lost by 7 wickets to Barnes on our terrible pitch (a public park) Bishops Park - in the shadow of Fulham football ground. I can remember literally nothing about this match but it was the 4th defeat in a run of 12 successive losses for Open University and I am guessing that OU captain Dave Hunter may have had some choice words to say about our performance.
The line-ups would have been something like; OU - Graeme Douglas (wkt), Nick Lefebve, Peter Price, Alan Cotter, Dave Hunter (capt), Peter King, Clive Howard, Joe Chance, John Crossland, Emil Todorow, Nasser........ Barnes would probably have contained Hogg (A), Hogg (O), Seed, Flower, Williams, Webster, Mundy, Lichfield, Hanmer, Tagg..... give or take one or two of these.
Anyway, enough false nostalgia. A rather more robust Nomads line up took the field looking to make it 6 wins and 6 defeats this season.  Emil called correctly and chose to bat but we started poorly again. After playing one of the shots of the day - a feather-light leg glance, Mahesh unfortunately picked out the only fielder in a wide arc on the leg side and departed. A slight recovery took us up to 28 but Darwin and Abdul departed in quick succession leaving us in peril at 30 for 3. This brought Hasan and Zia together - could they do it again? They needed to. They did not disappoint and brilliant and remorseless batting added 142 for the 4th wicket. Zia was finally prised out on 91, his 6th successive half-century and Hasan - who has been having a fine season himself - made 60.
170-odd for 5 and we still needed a few more to make it safe as Barnes appeared pretty strong, and good rapid scoring from Abbas, Safi, Sami and KK took us up to 228 for 7 off the full 35. The wickets were shared out and inevitably Keith Seed - who has rarely come away empty-handed against OU or Nomads over the years - pitched in with 2 late strikes.
A quick strike by Emil Todorow (with the help of a nice catch from Darwin) brought on scrutiny of Emil's classical bowling action. Some of the Occasionals speculated that our skipper might be delivering the ball with both his feet off the ground - a feat demanding great athleticism, which admittedly Todorow does possess - and there was even a hopeful and plaintive cry of "No ball" from one of the spectators. It seems clear though that, although Emil does perfom a little skip in his penultimate stride, at least one boot is firmly planted on the turf at the point of delivery. Thank Goodness. It must be hard enough facing Emil anyway; imagine how disconcerting an airborne Todorow would be. Anyway, Emil soared above it all and bowled pretty well, as did Sami at the other end, but Barnes made serene progress with Roger Price, as ever, looking dangerous. At 66, however, Price was adjudged LBW, possibly a little harshly. His 2nd wicket partner soon followed, nicely caught by Sami in the deep, and this just about made us safe. There was some good batting further down from Barnes, particularly from Nick Benz, but excellent catching from Nomads - a superb diving caught and bowled from Abbas and a juggling effort from Sami would have kept the wickets section of the scoreboard rolling (if only we owned a scoreboard.) There was a brilliant direct hit by Zia from 20 yards back and last man Keith Seed was bowled by Safi in the final over in near-darkness to wrap up a solid victory for Clapham. KK was the top wicket-taker with 3. I do think though that, had it been a time match - which is Barnes' preference - the Away side could probably have secured a draw.  Anyway, this good win puts Nomads on 6 wins and 6 defeats with all to play for in our final match on Sunday against India Legends.
In the pub afterwards, we found out that Barnes have at least 4 or 5 professional players of the French Horn (and that is not a euphemism.)  Nomads cannot match that, although we are quite harmonious on the pitch these days; but in our early days we did have a classical cellist, a jazz composer and a man who had made several appearances on Top of the Pops all in the same line-up.

Clapham Nomads  228 for 7 beat Barnes Occasionals 145 by  83 runs.

Man of the Match - Zia (he has had the most incredible season. I will try to work back through the reports and calculate how many runs he has scored - it must be near a club record.).... Update.... I have been pretty useless at updating this blog this year and I don't have scores for a couple of the matches but Zia's scores have been; 31 not out, 40 not out, 53, ??, 26 not out, 0, 51, 105 not out, approximately 60, 85, 104 not out, 91.  This is a total of 646 runs at an average of 92.29. I will get the missing scores from John and the true figure is likely to be about 655 at an average in the mid to high 80s. I think the club record for runs scored in a seaon is 668 (Hasan last year.) .... I HAVE UPDATED THIS IN A NEW POST... Nick.
Fielder of the Day - Sami


Full scores to follow

Clapham Nomads 228 for 7 from 35 overs

Mahesh  2
Abdul  20
Darwin  7
Hasan  60
Zia  91
Safi  5
Abbas  9
KK  9 not out
Sami  10 not out

Did not bat; Emil (capt), John (wkt)

F.O.W. - 3, 28, 30, 172, 179, 195, 215

Barnes Occasionals 145 from 34.4 overs (Benz 33, Prasad 35, Price 23)

Nomads' bowling;

Sami  7-2-20-0
Emil  5-0-28-1
KK  7-2-18-3
Abbas  7-0-26-2
Zia  3-0-12-0
Hasan  3-0-19-1
Safi  2.4-0-16-1

F.O.W. - 3, 66, 69, 70, 73, 82, 93, 117, 145, 145

Clapham Nomads won by 83 runs.

Last game of the season this Sunday so after that I will update all the other matches on this blog and do the averages etc.  NL