TCC 3’s v. Hornsey CC 3’s – Saturday 4th August. 

T’s earlier game with Hornsey had proved an ill-tempered affair and there was a keen interest to improve on the winning draw from all the 3’s players taking the field at Broom Road today . Twickenham skipper Phil Parker won another crucial toss and immediately put the opposition into bat. With a different skipper in charge of Hornsey this time the whole atmosphere of the game seemed different, almost a friendly, sporting contest. Jacques Grobler, again opening the bowling for T’s started in dependably accurate fashion and was rewarded with the early wicket of opener Vara with the score at only 8. Captain Parker Senior chose to throw the new ball at the other end to son Jack , having shown lively pace at Southgate the previous week. Jack  responded with a crucial wicket, that of the Hornsey Skipper, Aussie Martin Tucker who looked to thump the ball solidly right from the start. Jack took some early “tap” from Tucker (22) but was bowled by a straight one in Parker’s third over (31-2 after 6 overs). Grobler then got his second wicket in the next over bowling Charlton(12), another important wicket as Charlton had made 81 against us in the previous match. From here on it was pretty much a cakewalk for the confident T’s bowlers. All six bowlers used pitched in with at least one wicket, the pick  being Travis Birtwhistle’s 3 for 10 off only five overs. What was remarkable about Travis’s performance was that two of his wickets were given out LBW by the oppo’s umpires, the LBW rule not seemingly being in their umpires’ armoury during the first match and roundly pooh-poohed as an option on their own website by one of their senior members (who was aptly dismissed for a duck by Howard McCann in this particular match).  The lower batting order of Hornsey were woefully inexperienced and collapsed like a deck of cards to 93 all out in the 40^th over.

After tea, a new opening partnership of Colin Blunden and Kalim Abbassi took to the wicket for the T’s. Kalim initially looked strong off his legs as he dispatched the aggressive opening bowler, Tucker, through square leg for four, but this was short-lived as Tucker clipped the top of Kalim’s bails with a lifter with the second ball of his second over (7 for 1 off 3). The experienced and very accurate Bruce was trundling in from the other end and he got a deserved second wicket, bowling Colin Blunden for just 4 in the eighth over with the score on 22. This brought the Natal boys together, Steve Van Niekerk and Travis Birtwhistle, more competitive with each other than the opposition, decided the best form of defence would be attack and sought to dismantle the ever more confident opposition bowling attack with solid hitting. Travis (18) rattled the score along to 53 before falling in the 14^th over, clean bowled by Bruce. Our batting hero from Southgate Howard McCann(14 n.o) then joined Steve(46 n.o) and the result was never in doubt from that moment. The T’s reached their victory target in the 22^nd over, finishing at 96 for 3. A victory by seven wickets – to TCC , a much-needed 10 points.       

Phil Parker.