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Match Report vs Lisvane 15 August 2010@ St Mellons (Skipper Jam, report Shakey)

Jam had the honour of being captain for the day on his 250th appearance for the Casuals. This was also our first match at St Mellons since August 2002 when we enjoyed an easy win over Highways Hurricanes and four players survived to take the field – Jam, Stevo, Shakes and Dave.

Amid the heat and glaring sunshine we discovered the old entrance to the ground through the golf club had gone and rolled up into an adjacent business park. Had the Mexican jail which doubled up as a changing room been demolished?

Thankfully yes. The toilets worked, a white picket fence surrounded the shorter boundaries, a heavy roller chugged away on the square and three fat cazh could fit in the new showers – progress indeed.

Jam and Ed opened but after biffing a good cut to the boundary Ed was caught at point in the first over (4). Quiet cricket ensued as the Lisvane openers alternated between bowling very straight or a little wide so that sundries allowed the rate to tick along. After a pleasing push through extra cover for four JR was the next to depart bowled (5) to leave us 21-2 off 5.

The new partnership of Jam and Kim took a grip of the game for the next 45 minutes, scoring freely while never quite being in total control. Kim was dropped twice and found it hard work apart from some nice clips to leg, and Jam patiently waited for the opportunity to deploy his trademark lofted straight drive. The electronic scoreboard began to race along as we reached 92-2 off 18 with a minimum target of 180 firmly in our sights on a quick outfield.

The introduction of two promising Lisvane youngsters, combined age 30, abruptly halted the flow of runs and we inched along against some accurate bowling. Jam finally fell, bowled by a shooter, for a well made 54 (7 fours) in the 25th leaving us 115-3. Ash rotated the strike well but also soon departed to a tight run out and it was clear that the cazh innings needed some momentum.

With those instructions from the sidelines ringing in his ears Stevo theatrically left the first two balls he faced and didn’t score off the first seven! What was he doing? Did he have a plan? Has he ever had a plan?

Stevo proceeded to plunder 24 off the next 10 balls with 5 crisp boundaries, giving our innings the impetus it badly needed, until he was eventually caught at mid-off. Mahesh came in to join the party and thanks to an increasingly fluent innings from Kim, in which he passed 2,000 runs for the Club, the three of them racked up 69 from the last 7 overs. Mahesh was finally caught off the last ball for 14, leaving Kim 77 not out (10 fours) in a total of 215-6 which was at the upper end of what we hoped to achieve.

Cazh spirits soared with the sighting of a plentiful and most excellent Tea, with homemade pie the highlight. Some cazh felt compelled to feast on two slices of said heavy pie (mea culpa?) and hoped to be placed at the top of the St Mellons slope where less running would be required. Alas that plan failed and the tactical Tea won out.

The first innings had shown that after all those years, and even with a heavy roller, the pitch hadn’t changed. It was slow and low with some gentle turn – a typical old Wenvoe wicket here at St Mellons. So we had to bowl straight, field cleanly and catch anything lofted in the air.

We started well with Dev bowling economically and JB picking up a wicket caught behind by Stevo in his first over. A chirpy Casuals team experimented with a new nickname for Mahesh/Frank – cuckoo (Dev can explain but I’m not really sure it works). But the young Lisvane opener Ikram slowly found his feet and played some increasingly aggressive shots so that when we clamed our second wicket, lbw to JB, the score had moved along to 46-2 in the 12th over. JB bowled through to complete his spell and picked up another wicket bowled to claim 3-28 but this brought in the number 5 Williams.

Williams became the senior batsman, with Ikram playing the supporting role, as they looked to put pressure on the cazh with some judicious hitting. Our fielding frayed under the attack and catches were put down, the ground fielding became laboured and our throwing indifferent. The bowlers also failed to apply any pressure without bowling particularly badly with Dave, Shakes and Mahesh taking the brunt of the damage as Lisvane posted 73 off the next 8 overs.

Shakes halted the Lisvane advance with a glorious full toss doughboy special which Ikram (54) heaved into the waiting hands of Stevo at mid-on. The bowlers finally began to chip away at Lisvane and pressure mounted on the batting side as Shakes picked up two more wickets caught off full tosses, Ed at midwicket and a caught and bowled, and Stevo got just reward for a tight spell by bowling the number 7. At 173-7 in the 33rd the lower order were exposed and we had a sniff.

But Williams was still there and he just kept batting. Our fielding sadly failed to respond to the challenge, including a run out chance, and Williams raced past his century and took Lisvane home with 3 wickets and 13 balls to spare with an undefeated 111 (15 fours). We just needed that one wicket.

Dev 8-1-53-0
JB 8-2-28-3
Dave 5-0-30-0
Shakes 8-0-48-3
Mahesh 3-0-22-0
Steve 5.5-0-30-1

We picked over the bones of the match with a few tinnies in front of the pavilion as the sun went down and darkness descended. The older Casuals may have wanted to cast their minds back to Shield games played with a red ball in near darkness some ten years before. But we all knew our fielding had let us down again. A disappointing result but the idle chat and banter ensured it wasn’t a wasted day.

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