Miracles do happen. A balmy warm evening in April, a Priors Park pitch with bounce, Mallards extending their winning streak … well, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad.
Winning the toss, skipper Buxom elected to field first, barely had he uttered the words and Cleaver was already out in the middle pacing his run-up. A tidy first ball, was swiftly brought to crashing reality with Kings skipper, Craddock (any relation to Fanny?), smashing the next two balls for a 4 and then a 6 that required the spare ball to be brought into play. Craddock then benefited from the extra wide setting of the stumps when Ajay clean bowled him, only to see the ball pass through the gap between middle and off-stump without troubling either piece of timber.
Using the bounce that was especially prevalent when bowling up the slope, the KSOB batters pounced on anything short and put pressure on fielders with a lot of cheeky quick singles. A veil will be drawn over the run 4 – the sight of our skipper valiantly lumbering up the hill while two young tykes covered twice the distance between the wickets.
Mallards resorted to the tried and tested technique of trying to get slower scoring batsmen to the crease, by getting the faster ones to retire. Only Latif had any success, a lovely floated delivery that clean bowled young KSOB tyke Kamal for just 8. The total at the end of 16 overs, a challenging 126.
Mallards reply got off to a flyer, with Kumar (keen to atone for his regulation dropped catch behind the stumps) but not without the loss of fellow opener Nair for a duck. Nyenhuis, taking a leaf out of Kumar’s book, came out with similar attacking intent smashing his second ball for 6. Still, with 17 smashed off the first over, could Mallards pull something unlikely off? Sadly not. Ian Black, despite numerous requests from the umpire, refused to throw in a few declaration pie-chuckers, and instead bowled the same nagging straight line he always does. It all proved too much for Kumar, bowled trying to make some space to hit a ball heading straight for middle stump for 15.
Apart from short cameos from Nyenhuis and Cox who were able to find the boundary, the next 7 overs saw 8 more wickets to fall. At 58 for 9 in the 8th over, it all looking a bit hopeless. However, veteran Cleaver and, batting like a man twice Tony’s age, Buckley had other ideas. Between them they blocked out the next 6 or so overs, to add a creditable further 16 to the score, ensuring that Mallards got over the half-way mark, all out for 74 with 9 balls of the innings remaining.
So winning streak not sustained, but who’d have thought that Priors would have bounce or that we would be playing in April in shirt sleeves?
-GT