Not exactly off to a flyer…
| Month | Played | Won | Lost | Cancelled |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| April | 4 | 1 | 3 | 3 |
We kicked off the season with an uncommonly warm if blustery start to the season for the Interclub. Even better than the weather was a brand-new artificial strip kindly installed by English Heritage (thanks EH team!) and an outfield that had been mowed (many of you will remember the 2-foot-long grass that greeted us early in the season last year.). The highlight of the day being the start – where the legendary Duncan Ross’s 70th birthday was honoured by the club.
Next up was the first opponent, Grace CC. Batting first we were in trouble at 111-9, before Samin batting at 10 made 33* – the highest score of the innings – in a stand of 44 with Deano for the last wicket to take us to 145. That was enough – despite early season butterfingers Graces were rolled for 105 with Guy taking 4.
Gentleman of West London were a tougher proposition – it looked so good at the start with the first 50 of the season a lovely one from Avi (61) supported in a century opening stand with Dan (63). However, the outfield with all the rain was now much lusher and Dan and Avi ran themselves ragged with resuscitation looking likely at one point. With overs running out the rest of the order tried the slog but with only one other player making double figures a total of 172 felt a bit shy of what could have been. And it was not enough – despite GoWL being 80-5 a series of dropped catches (Vijay not one of them with a lovely one-handed c&b) let them off the hook to get the runs with no further loss.
Not much to be said about the Hounslow Hurricanes (refer to Duncan’s excellent match report), a total of 166 looked gettable but Crossbats never recovered from 44-5 despite a blazing 66 from Adam Skinner getting us close.
We then lost an entire weekend with appealing looking fixtures against Morden and Frimley cancelled.
Finally, to round off the month a late withdrawal from an opponent was rescued by Karnataka Challengers – who turned up with a rather strong looking side and rolled over CB for 100 (made respectable only by 26 by Mike McSweeney) and then knocked the runs off in 12 overs. With the Sunday fixture then rained off, April 2024 will not go down as a vintage month in the history of Crossbats.
But fear not – better weather (and times) are ahead!
John Reardon
