Bickley Park CC – 3rd XI vs Dulwich CC – 5th XI

Report

On a glorious day where the world was busy enjoying Harry’s wedding and FA cup final, out went Bickley 3rd XI on a hunt for second win at Warren against Dulwich CC. Bickley arrived to the skippers headache of late drop out of players to emergency issues so have to play with a 10 man team.

Bickley Skipper won the toss and elected to bat with an unusual opening pair Sahil Bhagat and Jeremy Frost who made a solid start to put 44 in the first 10 over’s then losing Jeremy to a misjudged off spin. However with less depth in the batting front Bickley’s reliable number 3 batsman Thanga Haran was building up some rhythm with Sahil Bhagat where both fell to the trap of Dulwich spinners in a quick succession scoring 16 and 22 respectively. Simon Davis came off to a good start taking control of the spinners and rotating the strike however the skipper fell into the trap of spinner A.Blackford trying to whack over mid off, Bickley at that point were 73/4. However a valuable partnership between Simon Davis and Anuj Tomar took Bickley to 117/6 losing Simon Davis at 33 and Anuj at 22 and the tail collapsed putting up a respectable total of 123/9 in 40 overs. David Begg took 4 wickets in 10 overs and the spinners did a good job to restrict Bickley to 122.

As usual the home team was kind of not much looking forward to the chary tea at Warren however tea was taken in good spirits and bowlers were looking forward to an early breakthrough with the attack.

Dulwich openers J.Deane and T.Brown started well reaching 35/1 in the first 15 overs keeping a slow run rate however opening bowlers Simon Davis and Sunny Saikia maintained a solid line failing to take any early wickets with the cautious opening pair. In came Sahil Bhagat as first change bowler making a breakthrough to take T. Brown to the keeper’s gloves, Anuj on the order end bowled a good line and took the second wicket at 54/2. Dulwich batted sensibly and reached 123 in 31 overs losing 2 wickets and Bickley tasted the first defeat of the season.