Victorious at the home of cricket

The Links was the venue for what would transpire to be a close game with several pivotal moments, and not to be underestimated was the state of the facilities. The wicket at the Links can only be described as a drunk trying to walk in a straight line with severe variations in bounce at both ends.

This would contribute to a tough time batting. Huntly won the toss and elected to bowl first. Pardeep Sudhakar and Blair Findlay opened the batting. The first ball of the innings was smashed for four from Blair and from my view umpiring at square leg; I felt it was going to be a good day. However, my feelings of success were soon dampened when Blair was caught not long after. Along came Faheem to the crease. After havening the luxury of watching a couple more deliveries from square leg it was clear the pitch would cause some problems when a couple deliveries dying once pitching and rolling along the ground. This was the case when Faheem soon joined Blair on the bench at the home of cricket – the Links.

Rob and Natesh didn’t last long finding it difficult to get going on an invariant strip. However, it was the introduction of Fionnlagh Copland to partner Pardeep in the middle when we finally got going and a partnership to rival Batman and Robin was formed. The pair batted extremely well with Pardeep scoring 67 before he was given out lbw and Fionnlagh scoring 35 before he was cleaned up.

Jamie Seedhouse and I (Ian Lumsden) provided some useful runs - Jamie 19 before he was bowled in the last over. In came Clark Cameron to face three balls. First ball attempted Dilshan scoop in which he gloves and we run. Second ball, I face, a leg side wide, I turn round to see the keeper take it and look up to see Clark, who had just appeared at my crease. Subsequently I was run out for 15 with Clark laughing as he trots off the pitch not realising there was still one ball left. However, after the shenanigans of the last over we finished with a fairly respectable total of 172, losing 9 wickets.

Clark Cameron and Natesh Shivakumar opened the bowling. They bowled very well and kept things tight for the majority of overs and things were looking good when Clark removed the opening batsmen. Things slowly ticked along until Natesh’s last over when R Howe for Huntly decided to tee off. He score 88 in what could have only been about 30 deliveries, everything went for 6. I even came on to try bowling to him but he hit me out of attack. However, I had a gut feeling the way to get him (given the state of the pitch) was through slow bowling. So I threw the ball to Mannofield’s very own Callum Herd. After receiving torrents of abuse from children in the Huntly line up Callum was anxious not to add any more fuel to the fire. He didn’t disappoint after being hit for a 6, very next ball he trapped R Howe lbw with a half tracker that got stuck in the pitch and beat him for pace (or lack of). He then took a decent caught and bowled in the next over which allowed Clark back on. While all the drama with Howe hitting sixes was unfolding Faheem Awan took 5-32 bowling with great discipline. Huntly in the end fell 13 runs short on 160 all out but with lots of overs to spare. If Callum Herd never took the wicket of Howe when he did they would have won the game easily. We also fielded extremely well with Jamie Seedhouse taking this week’s screamer of a catch.
Overall it was a great game to win and has taken us through to the semi-final of the Reid Cup.