It was tough result to take for the guys who played on Tuesday night. There are some games where you put your all into it, play well but just finish on the losing side.
We won the toss and batted on a classic flat Cov Indoor track. Seb and Samay opened up and played well for the first wicket. They pushed the “Railway Locos” in the field and got the lads off to an excellent start. However, once Samay fell caught and bowled for 18 it led to a mini-collapse in the middle order. Both Tim and Boz fell cheaply due to some good fielding but mainly because of some questionable calling. Then Seb, having middled a leading edge for our only boundary of the innings, was forced to retire on 25*. Our tail wagged quite significantly with Murphy hitting a handy 19 before getting bowled and Akash finished not out on 11, both working the ball nicely into the corners. We closed on 94 to leave the Railway Locos needing 95 to win to deny us back to back victories.
Both opening bowlers looked promising, with Akash picking up from where he left off with the bat and Murphy bowled one of the openers through the gate. This brought their imperious number 3 to the crease. He instantly crunched a 6 to mid-on, much to the dismay of captain Murphy, to get off the mark and took the game away from us hitting 3 boundaries before being called back in. Bozza lifted the mood with a good caught and bowled to get us back in the game. A run out quickly followed and after great grab off the wall by Samay we felt like we were in a winning position. But that wicket brought their best batsmen back to the crease to continue his hitting. Tim kept his head to calmly run out their number 6 leaving 10 needed off 2 overs with only one wicket in hand. The old saying goes that “catches win matches”. Never did this seem truer when Loco’s only remaining batmen hit one into the roof and Bozza positioned himself under it. Unfortunately it the ball dribbled out, agonisingly going to ground when just six runs were needed. There number three finished it in style with a six over the top of our demanding and aggressive field setting.
Not all is lost and there are plenty of positives to take from the game, including good batting and bowling performances. The one man band, who ended up on 53*, just took the game away from us. Two weeks of dropped catches prove that we probably need to do some fielding work. Captain Murphy has a lot to answer for, going down with an unheard of 1-3 win loss ratio, but at least he still has his 100% stall-less record to cling on to.