3rd XI win at Hampton Wick Royal

Saturday 28th July 2018
Friendly
Hampton Wick Royal 180 all out (39.3 overs)
Stoke D’Abernon 3rd XI 184 for 3 (32 overs)
Stoke D’Abernon 3rd XI won by 7 wickets

With good availability the Team Secretary was tasked with sourcing a fixture for an additional XI and an early offer was received from our friends at Hampton Wick Royal. Fifteen available became eight by the Friday afternoon, said TS one of the casualties when his body reminded him on Thursday that running suicidal singles was a thing of decades past.

Anyway, back to 2018, Deepak Malhotra and Raja Singh sourced the necessary heads; and room was made for Drew Birch who contacted us to say he had a bye-week from his League cricket programme in Bournemouth and was around if needed.

The home side chose to bat on winning the toss and runs were traded for wickets at regular intervals; although there were only three ‘wicket-takers’ from the eight bowlers used. Raja Singh, (2 for 19), took the first and last wickets; Geoff Vinall ran out two others; but it was Birch who cleaned up, registering his application for late call up of the week with a spell of 6 for 33 from his allotted eight overs.

180 all out and the home side hadn’t used 5.3 overs of their allocation. Good news for Stoke on a warm afternoon. McMullen top-scored with 59.

Alistair McMillan, (29), and Hamza Hafeez, (13), added 37 at a steady pace to give the chase a nice foundation. Vinall clubbed a quick-fire 36 to get Stoke ahead of the rate, (93 for 3); leaving father and son combo Deepak, (63 not out), and Aarav Malhotra, (29 not out), to knock off the rest with an unbroken stand of 91; just four short of the Club record for 3rd XI cricket.

One of the batsmen involved in the existing record stand was a certain Alastair Curran who was smashing Staines & Laleham’s 1st XI bowlers around the Stoke Rec at the same time as this partnership was taking place. His grounding in 3rd XI matches like these would have played a part in where he is today; so a massive thanks to all those who were keen to support this and other like fixtures to help our continued growth. Those who declined missed a great day.

When a completed availability sheet for all three XIs comes in, the TS will take a look at sourcing additional friendly fixtures for next weekend in addition to the League, Trust League and Sunday XI programme.

Scorecard : http://sdacc.play-cricket.com/website/results/3699225

Deepak and Aarav