Burgh Heath v Clapham Nomads - 10/5/15

Nomads made the long journey to Tattenham Way in Surrey, the pleasant hilltop home of Burgh Heath cc, oddly - given how far south we had travelled - the only ground Nomads play at from which Wembley Stadium is visible. It is also home to an incredibly large collection of bored teenagers whose main hobbies are skateboarding, banter and stealing boundary flags.
Anyway, enough trivia.  With the season and the weather warming up nicely, it was time to enjoy (or endure the ordeal of) a 40-over contest for the first time this year.
Burgh batted first and Saturday first teamer Ronnie combined well with a chap who went on to make 50, but the run rate was kept down by nagging accuracy from Sami and an entertaining spell full of variation from Hassan.  10 overs had the score on around 30 without loss.  Abbas took over at the Tattenham End and made the breakthrough, securing an LBW decision with a good, full-length yorker on leg stump.  The No. 3 was the best attacking player in the side and announced his intentions by chipping Emil for 6 over Long Off.  This player always gave us hope though and bowling and fielding remained high quality in the main.  Emil was the victim of what few fielding errors there were.
At the 20-over tea break the score was about 65 for 2.  Acceleration was gradual to about 120 off 29 overs.  Abdul did go for a few but he managed to dismiss Heath's dangerman twice, to identical catches by Sami on the Long Off boundary (unfortunately the first time was a No Ball.)
In the final 10 overs, the scoreboard's runs and wickets sections both began to rattle and an entertaining passage of play concluded with the Home Side (? 1 man short) dismissed for 183 on the penultimate ball of the innings.
Nomads had achieved a similar run rate quite easily in our last fixture against these opponents in 2012 but this pitch had more than a few snakes - low bounce in particular - and some very long boundaries.
Disaster struck very early on in our reply with Gul run out for 0.  Prasanth joined Mark for a useful consolidation stand of around 28 with some playing and missing and a dropped chance but mostly sound batting before Prasanth flicked one uppishly to backward Square Leg to depart for 11.  Hassan and Mark began to look assured with some classy cut shots; Mark just in front of square and Hassan just behind - good running between the wickets as well but luck deserted Nomads again with a thick inside edge from Bradshaw rolling back onto his stumps.
Everyone was contributing but we were just failing to build the major stand that was needed and this pattern continued as Darwin began to hit the ball really hard just as Hassan fell caught and bowled.  The score was around 100 but No. 6 Abdul was the last of the recognised front-line batsman.  Another useful stand took the score up to around 125 before Darwin was replaced by Nick Lefebve, playing his first game of the season.  Although Lefebve snicked his first 2 balls for 3 runs, he became bogged down after that against some decent bowling and a well-set field in the gathering gloom.  The required rate was already up around 5 when Abdul fell.
The innings then tailed off somewhat, though Emil and Abbas played nicely.  Abbas whacking it quite hard and Emil notching a 4 from a thick edge (which we suspect will have become a late cut by September.)
Still, batsmen lacking match practice did OK to see out the full 40, though we finished up 34 runs short.
This was an enjoyable game played in a good spirit with the exception of 5 minutes of madness which featured several of the home side becoming rather upset by a routine call of No Ball for a chest-high delivery which produced the "interesting theory"(SEE BELOW)* that a No Ball has to be neck height from a spinner.  Anyway we seemed to be all friends at the end which is good as this quite an evenly-balanced fixture which we would like to maintain.
I'll print the scores on here and do Man of the Match when I get the scorebook back.  Fielder of the Day was Sami, closely followed by John Crossland.
If John was in good form behind the stumps, he was in even better form with his mouth and the following are the 3 Quotes of the Day;
"If they had 3 wicketkeepers standing behind the stumps, they still wouldn't be as good as me." - John Crossland.
"The trouble is, our Lower Order is just not as good as our Top Order." - John "Sherlock" Crossland
"What our team needs is someone like Graham Napier." - John Crossland.

Burgh Heath - 183 all out off 39.5 overs

Nomads' bowling
Sami  8-0-23-3
H. Khan  8-0-24-1
Abbas Khan  8-2-25-3
E, Todorow  8-0-43-0
Abdul Khan  7-0-58-1
Gul  0.5-0-3-0

Clapham Nomads - 149 for 9 off 40 overs.

M. Bradshaw  23
Gul  0
P. Pattiyil  11
H. Khan  26
D. Gunawardena  21
Abdul Khan  24
N. Lefebve  3
E. Todorow  not out 10
Sami  0
Abbas Khan  6
J. Crossland  1 not out

F.O.W. - 1, 33, 43, 85, 122, 126, 133, 136, 144

Burgh Heath won by 34 runs.

Man of the Match - Abbas
Fielder of the Day - John Crossland - he took a catch, executed a run out and must have kept wicket well to justify the second of his 2 quotes (see above.)