Wimbledon United v Clapham Nomads - 23/6/19

Nomads were inserted by the hosts in another local derby against Wimbledon United at Cottenham Park.  A fine opening partnership of 55 (our best 1st wicket stand of the season so far) between Mahesh and Abdul got us off to a very solid start, though economical spells from Peter Brown and Ian kept a brake on the scoring rate.  First-changer Patel made the breakthrough in what must have been about the 18th over. Despite missing star all-rounder Hasan, Nomads had a hard-hitting middle order and local householders must have been quaking in their boots - and glaziers and garages rubbing their hands in anticipation - as Riaz and Zia prepared to clear the short boundary and the trees and rattle nearby windows and cars. They achieved a six each but United's bowlers just have that knack of popping up with wickets at the most inconvenient time and a match-changing mini-collapse took us from 94 for 2 to 98 for 5. Nomads' late-middle order, including new man Shairy, kept chipping away but a further burst for the home side took Nomads from 144 for 6 down to 148 for 9. Thankfully an excellent 10th wicket partnership between KK and John dragged us up to semi-respectability on 170 before KK was caught behind off the returning Ian on the penultimate ball of the innings.
This is the sort of total we have reached in a number of games against Wimbledon, and we have won some of them, but United's historically strong batting seems to have moved up a gear in the last year or so, judging by their scores, despite the loss of star man Dave Hitchman. All Nomads' main bowlers returned respectable figures, particularly Zia, but John and Emil told me that the home side progressed to the target with comparatively little difficulty and won by 6 wickets with almost 5 overs to spare.  Still a reasonable perfomance against a team whose batting is becoming formidable and a nice tea as usual. 

Clapham Nomads 170 all out from 39.5 overs

Mahesh  19
Abdul  38
Rafi  8
Riaz  25
Darwin  0
Zia  31
Shairy  7
KK  25
Abbas  0
Emil (capt)  0
John  3 not out

F.O.W - 55, 61, 94, 94, 98, 123, 144, 144, 148, 170

Wimbledon United  171 for 4 from 35.2 overs

Nomads' bowling;

Zia  8-1-20-1
KK 8-0-35-0
Abbas  7-1-28-2
Riaz  6-1-35-1
Abdul  2-0-23-0
Emil  3-0-19-0
Shairy  1.2-0-8-0

Nomads lost by 6 wickets

Man of the Match - Abdul
Fielder of the Day - to be decided