The Jaguars 118-7 (Kav 38, Threadhold 25, Panigrahi 4-26) lost to Waterbeach 138/8 (Kumar 49, Charlton 31, B Savage 3-30) by 20 runs
MOTM - Kav
I'm a bit late to writing this match report, so my memory is a bit foggy and I'm writing between "important" meetings, so please be kind as it may need an update.
No Baines this week so Scottish jokes are less easy to come by. I think I might have exhausted my supply anyway. Ach no.
We've played Waterbeach before, we were again at Queens, and we had the nice Amardin playing for us again, and the summer heatwave continued. Waterbeach midweek seem to all be Milton weekend players, which is a bit odd, but there you go.
Waterbeach won the toss and batted. We had Mr Super-Fantastic Kav behind the stumps. Each game he tries a new role and seems to somehow be quite handy at it. I've seen him as a scary fast opening bowler, a dominating hard hitting gun opening batsman and now an octopus like wicket keeper with a deft turn in behind the stumps sledging. Some people, eh, they have all the skills?!
Amardin opened with Jake Holmes at the other end and the opening batsman were pretty solid. Amardin was economic, but kept not bowling at the stumps, the cheeky fella. Jake was bowling some good lines and scoring early was slow, but the batsmen were also not giving many chances up so the early pace and tone was a little flat. Eventually a few runs started flowing, with Jake and then Georgie Baker at the change, getting a bit of a bash around. Holmes was unlucky to go wicketless, bowling a full spell well, but not quite threatening as well.
When Jake rolled out of the attack, Ben Savage was in, and then the batsmen really got into their stride. I recall debutant Nate doing some fielding, Kav doing some fine glovework, Freddie not mis-fielding for the first week in about a year, and there being like no chances at all in the field. Matt also gave some good glovekeeping tips and put himself about a bit. The batsmen were scoring at an ok pace, not getting out, but not really accelerating either. It was an odd period. The pitch also, again, looked a bit spongey.
What the pitch appeared to be made of.
One opener fell bowled by Sir Benjamin Cabbage, the number 3 looked handy, but the rest of the things of interest then happened quite late in the innings. Felix Day bowled some gloriously nice looking stuff, to get one nicely caught in the deep by Amardin. He then tied a batsman down before bowling him with a lovely change of flight ball, seeing the batsman coming down the track he shortened his length quite deliberately and dislodged the bottom of middle stump.
Savage, partnering nicely, bowled one with a full straight ball. He then got the immediate next batsmen bowled off his glove, pad and knee, to leave himself on a hat trick. We all got in close to inevitably watch nothing happen for the hat trick before retreating to our fielding positions.
Freddie did a run out (well done Freddie - you're good at fielding pal!). I can't actually remember this, but it is definitely notable. Nate bowled an over, his first in two years. It was legal, I believe.
Amardin came back for the death and almost had a hat trick in the last over, bowling one with a fast straight searing yorker, bowling the next with a... yep, you guess it, fast straight searing yorker, and then not getting the hat trick because why would you.
Their rate was fine, they had been on for a monster total at one point, and getting them back to 138 felt like a win, especially as the last few overs were eventful for good reasons.
Freddie and Kav started the batting in reply and the bowling looked handy. Super handy. Kav advanced to the first 6 balls he faced and swung and missed, but was not out, playing out a maiden - he would have but for the fact it was an 8 ball over and he lumped a 4 at one point before rotating strike and taking more of a shine to bowler 2, hitting 2 4's and a lovely off slap/driven six.
Freddie played a quiet supporting role of letting Kav hit the ball, and running for his cheeky strike stealing singles at the end of the two first 8 ball overs, whilst watching him spank it to all corners after the initial frustration.
Kav and Freddie heading out to Bat
Freddie clearly loved his supporting role so decided to get out to the tricksy bowling, missing a full and straight one leaving off stump asunder, having score 6 of the first 33.
All the bowling was pretty good from here on in. Threadgold partnered Kav "the slapper" for a while and the scoring was good if biased towards one end for Kav to put on most of a 21 run partnership.
Kav fell bowled having looked, for all the world, as though he was playing on a different pitch, apart from that first over when he looked very human and fallible, albeit very briefly.
Then it was down to Dan and me to dig in like the 3rd day of a Rawilpindi turner. In truth we both tried to score, but the bowling was very good and it was hard to score chaps. We quickly found ourselves behind the rate, and unable to change the pace despite our best efforts. We put on 30 runs, but it was less than a run a ball and not what the situation required. Mark of Old would have handy here, rather than Old Mark.
I feel eventually hitting to cow (at last mate), Matt was in then out, playing on I think. We were just a bit too far behind the rate with less than 40 balls to go. Dan fell and Felix and Jake were there to try and rescue an impossible situation. Felix ran admirably, and hit a wonderbar four over mid off with some glorious footwork before falling. I think Jake fell to some self-inflicted silliness, but it was late in the game and swinging was all there was to do.
Nate and George at the end got us nice and close. Nate hit a 4 first ball, George ever a suicidal runner made sure we put runs to get sort of close-ish, and we didn't win.
We went to the pub. It felt like every bowler in this team was good. It felt like a gettable run chase, that was prevented by some superb bowling. Anyway, there's always next week....
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