On a blustery day at Rubislaw, Grammar 2nd team to play Academy comprised: Magesh Devendran (captain), Chris Clelland, Doug Russell, Guru Thangamani, Hemalkumar Chovatiya, John Eagles, Karthik Mohanan, Philip Whitely, Rahul Gopal, Rama Mantha and Rizwan Mohammed.
Devendran lost the toss and Grammar were invited to bat first. Mantha was out quickly, bowled by the impressive Safeer. Clelland and Eagles battled for a while, hoping to see off Safeer. Some say that building an innings in these days of T20 whambam is a lost art, but Chris Clelland disagrees; after taking 40 minutes and 19 balls to get off the mark, he contributed more than half of the total before he was last out. Batsmen came and went at the other end, victims of a mixture of good bowling and poor shot selection, with only Eagles and Thangamani reaching double figures. Sympathy is due to Doug Russell in that it is less than ideal to get a fast accurate in-swinger for one’s first competitive ball of the season.
Meanwhile, Clelland was going up through the gears, first smiting a majestic 6 and then hitting 7 more 4s, as Gopal, Chovatiya and Whitely gave support near the end. Clelland was finally caught for 67 out of a total of 121 in 42 overs, the only blot on a wonderful innings being the moment when he mistook the soon to be stranded Thangamani for an Olympic sprinter.
Safeer swung the ball at lively pace and had the outstanding figures of 12-6-15-4. Grammar should probably have prospered more than they did against the lesser bowlers.
Even on a slowish outfield, 121 did not look nearly enough, especially when Academy got off to a brisk start. Uday looked dangerous until Thangamani held a sharp catch at point. Academy’s other opener Abinav looked very secure at the other end but it took Grammar some time to get the wickets of the next two batsmen who looked decidedly less secure. But then inspired spells from Chovatiya and Mohammed threatened to stand the match on its head as four wickets fell in a clatter. Praful had come in at number five and had watched the clatter. He continued to bat sensibly while Academy skipper Ashin dug in until he was bowled by Thangamani to leave Academy needing another 15 runs with two wickets standing and only 5 overs left to bowl. Sadly, number 10 Srikanth was actually an injured number three, and he and Prapul collected the necessary runs without visibly breaking sweat.
Grammar fielded pretty well, with only two difficult catches going down. The bowling was generally quite tight, as witnessed by Academy’s attacking formation only just scoring the runs in time. The outstanding bowlers were Chovatiya and Mohammed, and the complete bowling figures were: Chovatiya 12-1-23-4, Mohanan 4-0-18-0, Devendran 7-0-19-0, Eagles 9-0-21-1, Whitely 2-0-15-0, Mohammed 9-1-16-2, Thangamani 4-0-7-1.
It turned out to be an exciting game played in a good spirit. From a Grammar perspective, we (Clelland apart) will need to score more runs when we renew combat with Academy in the cup next Saturday.
Man of match: Chris Clelland for scoring more than half of the team’s total
Champagne moment: Chovatiya’s double strike in consecutive balls which brought Grammar back into the game.
