Teddington 4s travelled to Crouch End's pitch in North London. We ended up turning up a little late, mainly because Faz's sat nav decided to take us on a tour of Acton on the way. For, I think, the fourth game this season, we were again short of players and turned up with only 10.
We lost the toss and we stuck in. It was a warm day, but the sight screens consisted of large green hedges and the pitch was a tricky one, so it wasn't going to be easy. 4s captain, Matt O'Toole, partly because he wasn't feeling well himself, tinkered with the batting order and we opened with Dilan Camball and Hasan Mufti. Hasan clearly didn't fancy hanging around for long in the heat, as he was promptly pinned in front for a 5 ball duck. Joe Woodcock batted sensibly and accrued runs at a rate that wasn't matched by Dilan at the other end who took 20 or more balls to get off the mark. Both finished in their 20s (Joe - 28, Dilan - a 'Geoffrey Boycott' 23), Shaz hit 3 boundaries and after 'sickly' O'Toole came and went (to a good ball that was impossible to see), we were 89-5. Not good, as Donald Trump would say. Not good at all. We needed a score much more bigly than that to have a chance. Then it became the 'Faz and Taus show'. Our innings will probably be mostly remembered for the amount of lost balls it cost and the amount of time both sides spent in the adjoining allotments, looking for missing balls. It has to be said that the blame for this can be laid squarely at the feet of Tauseef Khan who seemed to be determined to have the abandoned by losing all the cricket balls in North London. Faz was also despatching the ball to the boundary and finished on a credible (if under par for him) 32. When Taus' rampage was finally over, the remaining wheels came off and we were all out for 168 off 42 overs, giving them 50 overs to chase them down at just over 3 an over. In all honestly, it looked a doddle.
In the end, they only needed just over 30 of them to reach the total, helped along by some inept fielding, it has to be said. We dropped a few catches, including one that was skied so high the fielder in question had so much time, he could have popped over to the scorer to give him his name before trotting back to take the catch; but he didn't move until it was too late and another chance was lost. Pick of our bowlers was young Bobby Woodcock, who returned very credible figures of 10-1-33-2.
After this defeat, it looks like we're looking at a mid table finish for this season. Still, better than going down, I guess. :)