It was the perfect day for cricket, sun shining, mild winds and momentum behind VCC 2’s we could prepare ourselves for a good game against and at Excelsior ’20.
Our ever so consistent captain Flo lost the toss AGAIN (6 out of 7 now…) as we were asked to have a bowl. Well, that worked out very nicely for us as Sajjad bowled, most probably, the best spell we have seen for some time beating the outside edge several times. This was backed up by Ali ‘ Baba’ on the other end. The openers seemed to be surviving the opening spell until Sajjad used some of his magic bowling a slower off-cutter to remove Luuk Kroesen, who seemed to be in good nick. In his next over he removed another with what you would call an incredible relay catch between Jake and Lau. Smulders chipped the ball behind gully where Jakes should have taken the catch. However, he fumbled the ball and somehow Lau managed to catch the ball inches off the ground. Thereafter, the run rate really was kept down by some good line and length bowling from Ricardo and Rehaan, getting a couple of wickets between them. Our fielding really kept the pressure on. Our spinners Floris and Shirsak then came on to get 4 wickets and really tighten the runs and applied some pressure. The tail of Excelsior had a little fight back with a couple of big shots until Sajjad came back on and cleaned up. Excelsior all out in 44.5 overs, setting us a total of 140 runs.
After a good lunch, the openers Babette and Jake came in and we lost an early wicket of Jake which brought in Nehaan. There was a good 60 run partnership between them before Babette lost her wicket, which was followed shortly by the loss of Nirav who decided to give the only fielder out on the boundary some catching practice by hitting the full toss straight to the deep mid-wicket fielder. We were taken home by Nehaan and Flo who shared a 54 run partnership with Nehaan top scoring 57* off 73 balls which included 8 boundaries and some classy shots supported by our Captain who spent some much needed time in the middle and with some nice shots. The batsmen backed up our bowlers’ and fielders’ performance.
We chased the total in 32.3 overs and managed to enjoy the back to back victories. It was good to see other players step up when needed showing a good team effort all around.
Next week is Hermes and we start all over again.
PS: Coachie BAM, please take the bag with all our stuff with you next time, thanks. Love you!
RC