Pink and Perky

18/09/2021

It had been a wait, but here we were again in action, the first time since June for either PWCC or OCLTC, and symmetrically it was a return trip south to Miranda do Corvo. Just as we have a dual identity, so do the Miranda players it seems: when I was in the middle, one of the fielders asked whether they were “Knights or Dragons, today?” to be informed that they were just Coimbra for the day.

Anyway, some things remain constant, and whilst there was a disconcerting moment when Sanath turned up at the Club on time, he swiftly moved to restore normality by disappearing to get petrol just so that he could set off fifteen minutes late after all. Phew. Remarkably, Sanath’s car was neither the last nor the penultimate to arrive, and true to Porto tradition the 11am start became 11.35am. Although in our PWCC coloured kit, this was to be a declaration game so we could expect a display of steady run-accumulation, a carefully considered declaration, perhaps Coimbra
stubbornly playing out for a draw in the gloaming, as Neil suggested before we began.

Playing with a pink ball, for the first time for most of us, we batted first having won the toss, Sabha and Sanath opening and looking to build a nice platform for the innings. I was in the changing room sorting out my kit as the first over, bowled by Andrew Winter, started, and I heard an ominous cheer from without, followed by the tell-tale whack, whack of bat on pads that told me, before he entered the room, that Sabs had fallen. John Z went in at three but it was proving hard to score and in the fifth over, with only nine on the board, Sanath was bowled by a ball from Winter that kept low on what was shaping up as a very unpredictable pitch. By the time I parted, bowled after failing to drive a full straight one that pitched at the base of the stumps, we had made just 23 from 15 overs but then John began to get his eye in, hitting eleven in four balls, including a nice six. Unfortunately, at that point he was gone via an unlikely juggled catch just behind square leg for what would turn out to be an impressive 19. Neil battled hard for his 11, the combination of pretty tight bowling, weird pitch, soft pink ball and fairly lush outfield continuing to make scoring shots hard to come by. Raghu similarly dug in for a while before deciding not to dig in any more, going for the big swing and in consequence the pavilion. A very dubious LBW (right-hander bowling round the wicket??) saw off ‘Boris’ Yetin before brief cameos from Alex and Bhavin lifted the score a little, and when Patrick was bowled by the ever-efficient Winter (6-4 in 4.5 overs) to end the innings we had mustered 86 runs in 37.5 overs.

Clearly we had been very rusty and were staring down the barrel of a heavy defeat, but, with a short spell to come before lunch we had a chance to put Coimbra under a bit of early pressure. As John reminded us, the difficult conditions would be exactly the same for them, so we needed to keep it as tight as they had in the field.

Duly, John produced a beauty of an inswinger to remove Stubbsy in the first over and, despite a bit of (probably unintended) time-wasting from the Coimbra batsmen, managed to get a second wicket before the lunch break.

Lunch was a tasty and plentiful spread prepared by the club wives, as always (they do a great job, however, when, whilst scoring alongside Coimbra’s scorer, I got the comment ‘of course, you have a staff who prepare all the pitch and the lunches and all the maintenance, don’t you?’ – yawn, are we still getting that? – I resisted the temptation to offer the comment that ‘of course, it’s nice of you to allow the ladies to participate by cooking and baking for you, a charming recreation of the 1970s.’).

The afternoon session began well for us as we exposed Coimbra’s somewhat foolhardy decision to play with the batting order. Patrick responded to Neil’s instruction to bowl just outside off stump to the novice batsman as we would be happy for him to occupy one end by sending the next ball into middle and leg stumps. He followed that with a second wicket five balls later, the player playing-on rather oddly. Four down with very few runs posted had put the pressure on the oppo and Abhishek began an excellent spell with a wicket in his first over, producing swing long after
John had promised there would be no more swing from the ball. Coimbra’s real threat lay in the middle order but, just as their number four was getting into his swing, Patrick produced a beauty to bowl him, Sabha took a stunner at first slip from Abi to remove the dangerous Faizal two balls after he had launched a huge six, and Alex pouched Andrew Winter on the boundary off what apparently was not a rank long-hop but a carefully-planned trap by Yetin. We had them on the ropes, but Chris Redhead worked hard at number nine to hold his end up whilst picking up runs where he could and, even when Abi got his third, leaving them at nine down, it looked as though they could do it. With
Neil and John leading the way, however, we held our nerve and concentration and the win came when John got through Chris’ defences to wrap up a memorable victory by ten runs. It should have happened shortly before but Alex was wrongly denied a caught-and-bowled but at least it came.

So, it was a strange one, T10 scores in a declaration match, with batting difficulties alongside tightness in the field. As well as continuing to build a nice ground in such an unlikely location, the Knights/Dragons are continuing to recruit and build a healthy crop of players. But they still didn’t beat us. Despite our best efforts to give them a chaseable total. Am I being hubristic? Probably, but I thought Neil was also when he said that the format would give them the chance of a draw, so the hubris has not yet hit. Long may that continue.

Well done everyone, and a special mention for Nuno who scored 76 at the first time of asking, seeing the innings out … as scorer.