At a cold and windy Summer Complex (home to Punjab), VCC never really got going. The 152 runs scored in the first innings never seemed enough to defend on the small Punjab pitch. Musa Ahmad (ex-VCC) quickly ended the Voorburg illusions with a fine 92 runs, giving Punjab the win by 8 wickets.
VCC lost the toss and was allowed to bat first. After the quick loss of the first wicket, the Voorburg fans in attendance were hoping that Michael Levitt would be able to continue his good form of recent weeks, but a poorly timed ball on bowling from the other former VCCer Sajjad Kamal, landed in the fielder’s hands, so the partnership for the second wicket was also soon broken. And that pattern continued. Every time VCC seemed to take back control of the match, it lost a wicket. Only Sybrand Engelbrecht held out for a long time before he finally had to concede in the second-to-last over also by 52 runs. The only other noteworthy contribution came from second eleven player Alyan Razzaqi, who stuck at 19 not out with a strike rate of over 150.
152 runs never seemed enough and it would take a tremendous bowling performance to keep the Rotterdammers below that total. But the mangled attack (Ryan Klein, Viv Kingma, Stijn de Leede, Floris de Lange all out with minor injuries, Philippe Boissevain unavailable) had a tough time against their former teammate Musa Ahmad. With five 4s and as many as nine 6s, he seemed headed for a quick 100, before Mees van Vliet still outsmarted him at 92. But by then the harm was done. Batsmen 3 and 4 batted it out competently and after 12.1 overs it was done for VCC.
After the two wins last week, now a fat loss for VCC. Next Saturday, May 4 -with hopefully the return of some injured players and the addition of South African Gavin Kaplan- the team awaits the double header against HBS and Hermes DVS at Sportpark Westvliet. That’s where the team can show their worth.
