Saturday 1st XI Vs Luton Town & Indians II

The first Herts League fixture of the season was met with excitement as Eversholt looked to rebuild after a poor 2018 campaign. Our first game in a new division saw us take on Luton Town and Indians 2s at home. The pitch was the major talking point before the toss, with it looking especially bowler friendly, which the home knew about after the recent pre-season friendlies. Add in the overhead conditions, and whoever won the toss would surely have a large advantage.

Luton won the toss and unsurprisingly chose to bowl.

A desire to Get The Game OnTM  meant that we started the league season at 12.55, 5 minutes before any other batting side would want to. Naturally this lead to Buzz being out first ball, finding a leading edge to the ‘keeper. Welcome to the season.

3 overs of a good contest between bat and ball ended in the 4th over when Luton’s opener Ahmadzai ripped through Eversholt’s top order, removing Ian (3), Jake (0) and Steve (0) in one devastating over. He followed that with the wicket of Josh the over after, leaving the home side 21-5 and in terrible trouble. Ahmadzai would eventually finish with exceptional figures of 7-2-13-5.

Two of the older statesmen of the team, Luke and James, then came to the crease and rebuilt to some extent. James was the first to go when trying to up the scoring, leaving us 54-6 but in the end, despite Luke’s fighting 28, all we managed was a meagre of 69 all out.

With such a small total to defend, defeat seemed inevitable. However, our opening bowlers Kamran and Rick bowled magnificently, and with maybe 50 more on the board they would have had us right in the game.

Kammy’s exceptional 9 over spell saw him take 3-17, and beat the bat on many occasions Ricky also took a wicket, and at 36-4, there was a chance of the impossible. However Luton’s number 3, Chanman was steady in his 20*, and his partnership with L Singh (12*) was enough to see Luton home.

Man of the Match goes to Kamran for his spell that gave us even a slight sniff of pulling off an impossible win.

Scorecard