Nightmare on Twickenham Green as Shepherds Bush annihilate the Ts by 221 runs

Shepherds Bush           279-3 (Rob Watts 110no, Mike Padbury 80)

Twickenham                  58 all out (Amit Suman 6-25)

When the Ts are good, they’re very good … but when they’re bad, they can be truly heinous.  Twickenham bowled, fielded and batted badly and a well-drilled Shepherds Bush outfit took full advantage, cruising to a massive 221 run triumph.

Despite the best efforts of Zippos circus the week before, Twickenham Green looked positively resplendent as Carlos Nunes won the toss and asked Shepherds Bush to have a bat in this MCCL Division 2 clash.  The track looked flat and, with a large outfield to make use of, Bush skipper Ed Reynolds and overseas player Rob Watts started off in positive mood.  Both batters drove and ran well, and it wasn’t long before the visitors’ total was moving along nicely.  The Ts’ cause wasn’t helped by the first of a plethora of dropped catches – Mike Vosloo being the first unlucky bowler, as Grant Hughes failed to cling on to one at first slip.

Hughes was by no means the only Ts player to suffer an attack of the butter fingers, with no less than 6 catches going down as Shepherds Bush piled on the pressure.  Reynolds’s departure for 18, well caught in the gulley by the ever-reliable J-P Cronje off Warwick Paull, did little to stem the flow of runs as the fifty came up in the 11^th over and the 100 in the 22^nd.  At 150-1 off 31 the Bush were building an excellent base from which to launch a major assault in the latter part of their innings. 

Watts, in particular, batted with composure and no little grace and his century (110no) proved the mainstay of the Bush’s big total.  Michael Padbury, batting at three, survived at least three scares – two dropped catches as well as a run out opportunity – and his composed 80 did much to lever Shepherds Bush above the 200 mark.  De la ray Terblanche’s 31no at the end included a plethora of boundaries and when Reynolds called his troops in the Ts found themselves with 47 overs to chase down an imposing 279.

The Ts innings started badly, got progressively worse and ended with nothing more than a whimper.  58 all out tells its own story.  Sure, Suman (6-25) bowled very well from the Hampton Road End, but when six people are bowled then something is nonetheless going wrong on the batting side.  The MCCL’s leading run scorer, Grant Hughes, was the first to depart to one from Middlesex Man Alan Richardson that kept pretty low, but it wasn’t long before J-P Cronje followed him, trapped leg before by Suman.

Warwick Paull and Carlos Nunes put together a partnership that was in effect the highpoint of the Twickenham innings (!), but skipper Nunes was fooled by a nice in-ducker from Suman, departing for 13.  The Ts’ middle order came and went within about twenty minutes and before anyone really had chance to catch breath Twickenham were 46-9 off 18.  Amit Suman – a seasoned first class cricketer who has pouched 38 wickets in his 16 matches for Delhi and the British Universities – continued to swing the ball both ways, causing all the Twickenham batsmen problems.  De la ray Terblanche also bowled with nice control, zipping the ball in the direction of the crowded slip cordon with alarming regularity. 

Last pair Dan Hough and Paul Cassidy did their best to hold up proceedings, batting obstinately for 10 overs in the hope of somehow eeking out a draw, but when Hough departed caught and bowled for 13 the Bush could begin celebrating going top of the league.

The Ts will doubtless move on to Acton next week aiming to forget what was a pretty shambolic performance.  Being positive, the Ts have always been a side that wins a few and loses a few and there were so many things wrong with this showing that it’s probably best to simply draw a line under it and move on.  Things, as they say, can only get better …