2013

Sun 21 July                               Worcester Park                        Lost by 68 runs

They  205/9 in 40 overs        (A.Powers 58, Turner 38*, S.Powers 29, Geale 25, Sumaer Amar 4/48, Tharakan 2/26)

We    137/10 in 32.3 overs   (Ledger 46, Marshall 30, Wilkinson 5/29, King 4/41)

On a beautiful summer’s day three and a half batsmen, some bowlers and a wicketkeeper representing KCC travelled to Worcester Park for a Conference-arranged fixture (so many extra players this Sunday). The ground is conveniently located adjacent to the train station, which provided a real opportunity for the club’s bigger hitters to test the mettle of National Rail’s finest with a slog-sweep over cow.

Perhaps it was this distraction that produced a score sheet with all the hallmarks of ‘batting collapse’, or perhaps it is because we only brought those three and a half batsmen, namely Chris Ledger, Matt Marshall, and Rohan Ghosh (the half is unnamed for security reasons). Kensington put in a solid fielding performance first up; Bernard van Vuuren held one end tight with figures of 8-0-26-1, while Sumaer Amar and Seethal Thakaran kept the wickets tumbling with two each in the opening stages of the game. Seethal was also able to maintain downward pressure on the run rate, finishing with tidy figures of 8-1-26-2. Imran Khan and skipper Sunil Amar continued the good work with a wicket each in the middle order, before a solid knock from Worcester Park’s A.Powers steadied the ship for the opponents and added some respectability to their score. In his return spell, Sumaer was able to dismiss the danger batsman before adding one more to finish with figures of 8-0-48-4 – a strong performance that earned him a lukewarm MOTM Cobra beer at the end of the day’s play. The upshot was that Kensington was set 206 to win from 40 overs. Easy.

Rohan and Chris opened the batting for Kensington, the former standing firm at one end while the latter set about chasing down the 205, opening his tally with three 4s over the lightning-fast outfield. Rohan eventually fell for 13 and was replaced by Matt, who looked comfortable at the crease and scored freely. 206…? Easy. Chris was bowled for 46 and Matty stumped for 30. The rest of the scoresheet contains two ducks, two 1s, two 10s and a notable 14 (4,6,4) from Seethal at No.11. We were all out for 137 – a mere blip in an otherwise outstanding season so far.