Spirited Swiss Colts With Two ZCCC Players Win League Match Against Cern CC   

5th May 2013 at Cern

A bright sunny and warm day, a damp and almost soggy outfield, and a hard, bouncy wicket confronted the Swiss Colts XI on their first outing of the season away to Cern CC. Losing the toss the Colts were put into bat. In difficult circumstances with the outfield bringing any ground shots to an alarmingly hasty halt, singles seemed the order of the day. Despite losing a couple of fairly quick wickets, Jai Sinh, Moaz Butt and captain Arjun Vinod attempted to steady the ship, but runs proved hard to come by. A watchful innings by Arjun after doggedly withstanding the Cern attack ended when he was caught on 14. With the score on 61, having lost the fourth wicket in the 19th over and the outfield failing to dry out at all, Simon Henderson decided going aerial was probably more rewarding. His boundaries altered the flow of the game and with team mates Dilshan Silva, Jack Dooley and Vinod Unikkadath relentlessly rotating the strike for him and spiritedly resisting everything that was thrown at them, the Colts XI progressed steadily and runs accumulated. A respectable total of 148 was reached before the tenth wicket fell in the 37th over leaving Simon on a well-earned 52 not out. A clearly rusty Cern CC had also managed to gift a very generous 54 runs in extras.

After the break the Colts XI began well, keeping a tight attacking field in place and avoiding any experiments with the bowling. And they got their just deserts with two early wickets by paceman Moaz Butt. He returned very respectable figures of 2 for 17 off 4 overs, while Ashwin Vinod contained well in his spell at the other end. After that Cern’s Peter Crook (25) and Sayan Choudhury (30) settled at the crease and runs began to accumulate. Deciding the best course of attack was to take the pace off the ball, Arjun Vinod introduced his spinners. This brought almost immediate returns when he himself removed the threatening Peter Crook. After that wickets began to fall speedily to the guile and consistency of Marishque Puvimanasinghe and Jack Dooley. A good pair of hands was shown throughout by gloveman Aiden Andrews. His juggled catch towards the end seemed to seal the fate of the opposition. Ashwin Vinod took a calm, unfussed catch, and his fielding, as well as that of Jai Sinh and Mehrdad Ibrahim exemplified the sharpness displayed in general by this Colts XI. Safe hands were also shown by Dilshan Silva who confidently took the vital skier off Arjun Vinod’s bowling, while the diving catch into the quagmire at the deep midwicket boundary by Simon Henderson opened Jack Dooley’s account. Between them the two spinners wreaked havoc among the batsmen and in the 26th over Cern CC’s innings drew to a close with a run out on 98, fifty runs short. Marishque finished with figures of 4 wickets for 13 runs after 7 overs, while Jack took 2 wickets for 11 runs in his spell of 5 overs.