Energy Exiles Cricket Club

Match Summary: vs. Merton, Sunday, 15 May 2022

Ground: Morden Recreation Ground
Captain: Keith Roberts
Match type: 35 overs
Toss: Merton elected to bowl
Weather: Cloudy, some drizzle
Opposition: Merton scored: 92 all out (32.2 overs)
Exiles Score: 179 for 9 (35 overs)
Result: Won by 87 runs
Man of the match: Shahid Iqbal 27 & 2 for 25

At 1pm on Saturday, there I was at Old Ruts enjoying a beer in the bright and warm sunshine.  So how come, just 24 hours later, I was huddled in many layers and an anorak as the rain/drizzle settled in for the afternoon at a rather bleak Morden Rec, praying that I would call right at the toss, in my first outing as skipper for well over a decade.  

I didn’t call right, but as it happens Merton’s skipper was clearly more confident of his motivational skills than I was, and consigned his side to a very wet afternoon in the field.  I wonder what odds you would have got on the match being completed if the Exiles had found themselves having to enduring 35 overs of drizzle and worse in the field?!

The cares of captaincy clearly had an immediate effect on my batting (I wish!) as I unaccountably missed a largely straight half volley, but that early setback aside, the Exiles top and middle order showed admirable consistency, keeping out the good balls, and ruthlessly dispatching anything loose. Ansar and Shahid put on a rapid fifty for the second wicket, and then Yahya shared solid stands with Ajmal and with Jamil, punctuated by Mark getting a horrible shooter which was just about the only example of the pitch misbehaving despite the good soaking it was getting.

The Exiles innings then threatened to implode as we lost three wickets on 148, but Evan, showing burgeoning confidence with the bat, shepherded the tail towards adding another 30 runs, including some sweet cover drives in the last over.  

After a nice tea (we definitely missed the John Innes Rec clubhouse, but good that the tea was still up there!), Exiles took the field as the weather slowly moved from miserable to merely unpleasant.  Naren opened in his usual miserly fashion and Masie relatively quickly cleaned up one of the openers, but Merton’s batters looked like they had weathered the early storm (see what I did there?!), and the odd false shot fell safely.  

There followed, by common consent, one of the best slip catches seen from an exile in many years.  Masie bowled a quickish, short of a length delivery outside off stump, the batsman shaped to cut, looking no doubt to repeat the slightly streaky four he’d scored down to third man earlier.  He got a thickish edge, and most of us were looking down to third man again only for Shahid to jump to his right, stretching out, to pluck the ball one-handed out of the air.  The batsman departed, justifiably shaking his head.  

From then, Exiles never really released their grip on the game.  Ansar and then Yahya bowled constantly threatening spell from the far end, getting through 10 overs between them at the cost of just 14 runs, and accounting for four wickets, while Shahid weighed in with 2 of his own from the other end.  The innings was finally wrapped up by Ajmal, with their No 11, batting one-handed after spraining a wrist in the field, giving possibly one of the easiest slip catches ever taken by an Exile as the ball looped so gently off the edge I had time to adopt the long barrier before the ball settled in my hands!

My last duty as skipper was to award the MoTM – from a very competitive field, demonstrating what an excellent team effort this was!  Masie’s 3-9, Ansar’s 35 and 1-9, and especially Yahya’s 40 and 3-5 were all excellent candidates, but Shahid’s fantastic catch (and another very sharp one, also at 1^st slip), alongside 27 and 2-25, just won out.  Well played!

Report By: Keith Roberts

Last modified: 11 March 2018 14:31:46. Top of the page