ANZACs vs CCC

ANZACs vs ROCC

An hour after

Brazil

beat

Germany

for their fifth World Cup, the ANZACs took the field against Roanoke Cricket Club, a side new to the MACC. The game was played on the Virginia Tech fields. VT has plenty of ground to create a large field, but for some reason had painted the boundary line a paltry 35 meters from the center of the pitch. This made for an interesting game of singles and sixes.

Simon, taking on his new role as ANZACS captain, won the toss and asked Roanoketo bat on a Flix strip which looked to provide some variable bounce and a little pace.

Parth and Satbir opened the bowling and struggled with their control to start. Parth seemed to try too hard. He had plenty of pace but gave more trouble to the keeper behind the stumps than he did to the batsmen. Satbir settled down to pick up a wicket. A bowling change to Hugh and Harman stemmed the flow of runs as they bowled some very tight overs. Hugh in particular looked in devastating form giving the batsmen all kinds of trouble, but his bowling was clearly too good as they never could get an edge. At the drinks break the game was delicately poised. The ANZACs hadn't picked up many wickets, but a few would change the game quickly.

The next bowling change brought on Keyur for a few overs and then Kartik. Just as Simon was about to take him off after his second over he picked up a wicket and was given another over. He then proceeded to pick up a wicket in each of his final four overs to end with a five-for. Some excellent fielding saw runouts by Hugh, Parth, and Harman. Parth came back on for the final overs and in the end got a consolation wicket as the ANZACs bowled Roanokeout for 156 in the final over. The score was about 30 runs more than it should have been. 22 wides and 5 noballs added to the total and the bowling was a bit ragged at times.

The ANZACs opened their batting with Satbir, coming off his undefeated century in the last game, and Harman. They looked to be pretty comfortable though they weren't scoring many runs, until Satbir opened his arms to the wrong ball and got an edge to third man. Shekhar came in and again looked good until his normally contemplative batting gave way to his Hydean alter ego and played an horrendous shot skyward. Hugh joined Harman and for a third time we thought things looked good before the umpire gave a terrible LBW decision. At the drinks break he showed the umpire the bruise while standing next to a stump and he admitted that it probably might have gone over the stumps. But he was none the less out and the ANZACs were in danger
of producing a dismal batting performance.

However, a tall dark saviour strode to the wicket. OK, Keyur was short and portly, but he was still the saviour. His innings reads as follows: . 1 . . 4 6 1 6 . 6 . 1 . 6 . . 1 6 4 6 . . 6 1 As the sixes flew farther and farther from his bat the game clearly changed to the ANZACs favour. In the end he had scored 55 from just 25 balls.

In the mean time Harman got himself out and Sudeep managed to put on a 29 run partnership with Keyur without facing a ball before he ran himself out. In the end it was left to Jonathan and Simon to see off the final 31 runs for the victory. It wasn't to be without incident as the bowler ran Jonathan out at the non strikers end during a delivery without warning. Great dissent arose from the sidelines and the umpire finally reversed his call to the correct call of dead ball. Simon then decided to finish things off with a few lusty blows to see the ANZACs safely home by three wickets.

In the end the ANZACs showed some character. In a position where previously they have folded into dismal defeat they hung around and thanks to some lusty batting by Keyur saw themselves home to valuable points. They remain firmly entrenched in the fourth position in the MACC standings.

Thanks to all the guys who took their cars up to Virginia, and to April, who accompanied Hugh on the drive as our only spectator.

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