ECS Day 3 - Badalona & Catalunya Jaguar

Our third day of play, Day 11 of the tournament, saw us playing against Badalona and Catalunya Jaguars, two teams who we are familiar with from the Northeastern league, but two that have brought in some other players for this tournament.

Badalona CC - scorecard
Given our longstanding good relationship with Badalona, and the number of very familiar and friendly faces in their squad (BICC members included!), it is fair to say that there was an added incentive to beat them and get our first ECS victory. Umer Razi won the toss and decided to bowl first. The bowling attack did a great job of keeping the scoring rate down (an expensive second over from Burhan Ejaz aside) with every other of the first six overs conceding single figure runs - Vishesh Gajjar even bowled a maiden over! Despite this, the opening partnership continued and decided to attack in the seventh over, bowled by Shriram Bhosale. Vishesh returned to get a well-deserved wicket in the next over, with Badalona captain and former BICC guest Omar well caught by Jack Jewson standing up to the stumps. Despite some lusty blows from former BICC player Surya, Badalona could only get to 124/1 from their allotment.

Anton “Mr Vegetables” Kritzinger was sent out to open the batting with Umer, and he hogged the strike for most of the 3-over powerplay getting us off to a flying start with 29 coming off the second over. He soon passed his 50, dissecting and moving the field about with some clever shots. Umer was seeing more of the strike by the middle overs and started to play some shots himself. At the end of the 8th over we needed just 17 runs with two set batters, but then Surya had Anton (69) plumb LBW. 12 were still needed off the last over as Maxi Hoeck came out to join the captain. Umer left the first ball of the final over, hoping for a wide that wasn’t coming. A single and a rushed bye to the keeper followed meaning we still needed 10 runs from the final three balls. Umer then connected with one that flew over the fence towards the commentators tent at leg on to ease the pressure somewhat. Clearly that pressure got to the bowler as two wides followed before Umer (39) was run out after deciding against trying a second and not reaching his ground. Maxi was on strike with us needing just one more run off the final ball. He glanced the ball down to third man (who had not been brought in close for some reason) and him and new batter/ runner Dev Mahadevan easily scampered through for that all important run to get our first victory of the tournament!

Catalunya Jaguars
Our second and final game of the day was against Jaguars, who had just suffered a surprising defeat to Bengali CC. They won the toss and asked us to bowl first. Like Anton in our first game, their opener Hamza Saleem Dar, a Spanish international with three centuries to his name in the tournament, hogged the strike during the powerplay. The first four overs all went for at least 20 runs, despite Vishesh picking up the wicket of the other opener first ball. In the fifth and sixth overs, Shriram and Imran Fareed managed to bring the runrate down a bit (only going for 11 and 13 respectively!) and claimed a wicket each but Hamza at the other end was clearly in a mood and our bowling as a unit was not as good as it had been in the morning. He went on to finish on 121* off just 40 balls, setting us a very tricky target of 188 to win. 

Our chase wasn’t helped when Umer was bowled first ball to a great inswinging yorker. Imran and Dev put on a good partnership, scoring quickly before that man Hamza dismissed Dev and Imran (30) fell soon after. Another good, quick partnership followed between James Bentley and Maxi and whilst they were going there was still a chance of an unlikely upset, although the sixth over only going for five put the brakes on that. James was bowled in the eighth over for a well-made 31 off 17 and Shriram took over the big-hitting responsibility. Him (22 off 8) and Maxi (37 off 16) were both dismissed in the final over with the game long gone. Our jokey spare-shirt wearing duo of Joseph “Butter-Finger” Danam and Kieran “Golden” O’Donnell saw out the end of the innings, with Kieran blocking out the final ball to avoid getting a golden! We finished on 140/6, 47 runs short but our highest total of the tournament so far. With that bit of good news and the win in the morning, it was deemed a very good day! We’d be back the very next morning for three, very winnable, games.

​Sam Phillipps