Rolling substitutes and a narrow defeat at Hampstead

London NZ was gifted the opportunity to play with rolling substitutes, so a team of 13 was selected for this match, allowing both new and tentured to get a game at this fine establishment. The weather was unseasonably sunny, and the pitch a road, so we were looking forward to getting out there.

LNZCC won the toss and elected to bowl, hopeful to extract whatever juice was in the pitch, would be used by the strike force of Nick T and Richie B. Despite an excellent spell from both, no wickets had fallen, so we turned to our 17yr old debutant David Mills for a breakthrough…. and he delivered through an excellent catch by Daniel Robinson. Sadly, David hurt his knee while bowling, so could only provide three overs for us, but was ably replaced by fellow debutant Dean MacKenzie.

The arrival of Pritesh Rana into the attack produced 2 more quick wickets, bringing on NZ and Otago representative Ben Lockrose to the crease, who some may recall last year took great joy in plundering our attack. Thankfully, the reintroduction of Richard Brooks resulted in Ben’s bails going flying soon after- crisis averted?

Vance Thompson and Nick Teulon kept the pressure on to close the match out for us while taking another 3 wickets between them leaving us with a very achievable 233 to chase.

With a top 4 bursting with talent, Scott and Mark opened and set us up well, cruising to a partnership of 74 before Scott was bowled for 35. Dan came in next looking, very comfortable from the get-go, however, Mark suffered the dreaded post drinks curse and was caught just after reaching his half-century. The arrival of Cheyne Voss triggered something of a competition between the two batsmen for who could hit bigger, resulting in Dan’s strike rate moving from the low 30’s to the mid 90’s through casually launching multiple 6’s over the tennis courts and onto the road.

The commentator's curse reached out through the signal chat to deprive Voss of a well-deserved half-century, LBW for 49 with a strike rate of 114. But with 48 runs an over required from the final 5 and Dan still around, we had some work to do. Richard Lambie came to the crease and cricket suddenly became unorthodox, with Dan and Richard using reverse sweeps, laps, and scoops to keep the scoreboard ticking over. Sadly Richard tried to play an actual cricket shot and was clean bowled.. a lesson learned!

Sadly, our friendly Kiwi Ben, was brought back into the attack for the 38th and 40th overs, resulting in Andrew Barkle getting stumped on the last ball of the 38th . But with

11 runs required in the last over, and Dan batting like a daemon, we held onto hope this would be a match for the ages…

Ben’s first 3 balls then resulted in a Stumping, a bowled, and an LBW, double-hat-trick secured. With Dan looking on in horror from the non-strikers, Vance sacrificed his wicket to be run out so that Dan could get on strike for the last 2 deliveries of the match… 11 to win… could we do it???

Sadly the score remained unchanged, and LNZCC finished the innings on 222 with Dan’s impressive 59 and 2 catches earning him the Man of the Match Vino. The game was played in great spirits against a great squad, special thanks to Shaun Raumati for his very competent umpiring of all 80 overs, we literally couldn’t have played the game without you!

The silver lining for this loss for LNZCC is that Ben has now already been signed up to play 2 matches for us this season as compensation for that last over- so welcome to the club Dean, David and Ben!