Risinghurst Cricket Club

Recap

By Govind Gour

A day when no human being wanted to have outdoor activity, Risinghurst endeavoured to have a full game of cricket. With a 90 percent rain forecast and cloudy conditions, RCC was asked to bat at their home ground. Captain Kalyan decided to shuffle the opening pair and put Rakesh N with Saurabh M. However, this move did not yield any success and both the openers were back in the hut before the middle order could get ready for throw downs. Middle order young sensation Romio F and Lokeshwar B (Lucky) tried to stabilise the ship with a few beautiful drives. But they could not make it substantial as Romio was undone by a beautiful inswing ball and the latter one just handed a regular catch to the mid-off fielder. That brought the mister reliable Mansoor A  and Sandeep G and former started to take attack back to bowlers. Eventually, the opposition captain was forced to bring new bowlers from both ends who were also ineffective against Mansoor. In between, Sandeep G became victim of poor umpiring and was given out LBW. That brings our team leader into middle Martin K who batted sensibly and kept on ticking the score with singles and twos. However, soon after he shared the same fate as Sandeep and was given LBW for the ball hitting his upper part of the thigh guard. On the other hand, these all things didn’t stop Mansoor A who kept on launching other bowlers for 6s and 4s from the other end. Before he could reach his three digit mark (70), he mistimed one shot and handed a well-judged boundary catch. In the recent times, RCC’s tails (Samuel, Govind, Saurav and JT) have been quite effective, which added valuable 40 runs (final team score 159) worth mentioning a beautiful six over the bowers’ head by our new team member Saurav M.

Garsington and Cowley started carefully and picked up their shots nicely. On the other hand, RCC’s bowler started well but soon Rakesh N was taken off as he sustained side strain. That brought a boy with golden arm Lucky into attack who without wasting any time, started hitting the right channel. Opposition openers found it very difficult to negotiate with him. One of the openers tried to launch him but was deceived by his length and beautifully taken at mid-on by Rakesh N. Other opener fell for the cut shot and ended up chopping his own stumps. This was just the start, he trapped one more batsman for the same shot and got another batsman run out with his electric and accurate throw. On the other hand, he was well supported by Govind who also managed to sneak through into their batting line up. Govind was also hard done by harsh LBW calls like his team mates (Sandeep and Martin) and was denied one LBW (5-er/hat trick ball) which was plumb for naked eyes. Bowler’s efforts soon were undone by the rain and the game was stopped.

After 40 mins of rain, with great team effort in removing covers and clearing the ground, RCC managed to resume play for the last 15 mins of the match. The reduced overs meant that Govind and Lucky had already finished their quota of overs, RCC relied on the trio of Martin, JT, and Sourav to finish the task. Garsington and Cowley (G&C) resumed reluctantly knowing their chances for a draw or win were already slim. The tantrums thrown by batsmen to waste time was eventually stopped by stern warning from the umpires. However, all RCC efforts to win the game were in vain as G&C managed to cling on to a draw by negotiating the last 5 overs.