20-20 3rd week Bashers vs Pudong

Another early Saturday start, hot morning, well-matched opponents. Another post without all of the details at my fingertips. Captain Poppy was inserted, and he started us off with Artois. They were making good progress before the aggressive Deepak bowled Poppy, and had Artois caught. Tiny and Post-Op fell to enthusiastic Chinaman Adam, leaving Swoop (36) to join Ringer (31) with some rebuilding at 66 – 4 in the 8^th over. They built an excellent partnership of 60, and some last over fireworks from the Korean took us to 150 off our 20 overs.

150 is a good score off 20 overs. It takes some chasing, and it also takes some defending. Whichever side can maintain momentum will win.

Papps and Tiny opened up for Bashers. Papps cleaned up Craig and the Vicar, and the Papps-Artois combination for run-out to remove Ben had us in the box seat. LongDong picked up another wicket, Spanky was too quick for McKimm, and Pudong were 5 down in a rush.

Like the Bashers, Pudong fought back. Deepak and Ankit combined well. When Deepak fell, we got to the crux of the game – an aggressive partnership between the hard-running Ankit and Amogh up against our bowling and fielding. The best equation for Bashers was 66 runs off 7 overs, and now the ante was upped by the batsmen. 1s were turned into 2s (or even 4s). Good placement from the batsmen made the most of only 4 fielders on the boundary. Big shots brought 6s just over the boundary fielder’s heads. Dot balls were rare, treasured beasts for Poppy and L’Epa. In short, the batsmen maintained the run rate, and we couldn’t maintain the squeeze.

We ran out Amogh when he took 1 risk too many, but Manoj proved a good foil to Ankit. The last over came with 9 to win, we missed 1 run out, took the 2^nd run out chance, but Ankit had 2 balls to score 2 runs, and with the field up, he hit a 4 to finish with 54 not out.

This was a very competitive game of cricket. Either side could have won – it was properly decided in the last over. Bashers played well, but not well enough. It was much better than a 40 over game in the heat (and probably closer). The Bashers and Pudong players who stayed for the Hot Dogs 6s did some excellent socializing for the rest of the day. It was pretty close as to who did better on the amber nectar, but Baggott’s tea finished off Ben, so Bashers can take the nod there for an honourable draw overall.