A tough day at the office for the Ts. The twos continued their perfect start to the season, but the other four Saturday league sides came off second best. Back to the drawing board for the last round of win/lose matches next week in week 5.

Batting woes for the ones
The 1st XI travelled to Enfield knowing that a run-fest was on the cards. Enfield’s track has a reputation for being flat, so the first XI batsmen knew that the onus would be on them to go big. An hour in to the game, however, and it was less a case of the wheels falling off as the whole engine exploding. 41-6 and the Ts were looking at an early finish.

The lower middle order thankfully showed a bit of steal. Amardeep Rehncy (61 in 68 balls) and Gurjit Sandhu (88 in 108) turned things around admirably and a quickfire 37 off 25 balls from Luke Jones saw the Ts finish on a respectable 237-7.

The hosts nonetheless showed that there were very few gremlins in the track, blasting off in hot pursuit. Opener Neville Talbot led the charge (61 in 28 balls!) whilst Max Houlahan (45 in 28) followed in much the same vein. The ever-reliable Jack Plumb was nonetheless the mainstay and his 83 (off 112 balls) saw Enfield home with the minimum of fuss. See here for the card.

2s keep on winning
Skipper Eugene Berger led the twos to their fourth win out of four as they opened up an eight point lead at the top of Division Two (see here for the card). The skipper himself was the star of the show, blasting 100 in a mere 66 balls although Matt Dean continued his rich vein of form with 48 at the top of the order. The less said about the four run outs (!) the better, mind!

Indian Gym started their reply brightly, but once the first wicket went down they were never really in the hunt. Tom Field did his best to slow everything down (3-27 off 9) and Nakul Vishvanath (once again) picked up three wickets (for 19 off 6). That's 11 league wickets already for the Knuckle Duster - rumours that that's more the sum of total runs he's scored when batting are wholly unsubstantiated. The Ts cantered home with plenty to spare.

A day when it's just not meant to be
The 3s, 4s and 5s had less happy stories to tell. Middlesex Tamils’ thirds were restricted to 167 at St Mary’s with The Big Tackle (Stuart Amos) helping himself to six wickets. A cataclysmic top order collapse (44-6) nonetheless left Steve Watts’ men a long, long way behind. The tail wagged ferociously with Pete Darby in particular doing all he possibly could to help pull off an unexpected triumph. But, it wasn’t meant to be, and the 3s ultimately fell 21 short.

Paradoxically, the 4s produced arguably their best batting performance of the season to post 134 against Middlesex Tamils’ 4th XI. MTSSC look a strong bet for promotion and despite only arriving (and taking to the field) with 7 men they soon showed what they were made of. Uzzi Khan (33) and Raj Patel (28) were the stars of the show. As Hinay Dassani noted afterwards “if we had batted like that in our other games we’d probably be mid-table now”. The 4s then did their best to restrict MTSSC but their visitors’ top order ultimately got home with plenty to spare.

The 5ths also showed plenty of resoluteness with the bat, setting Shepherd’s Bush 4s 185 to win. Martin Fairn (62) led the way with Chris Supple (24) offering solid support. Bush opening bat Jay Singh (72) nonetheless set the tone and the 5ths quickly found themselves chasing the game. A couple of wickets for the Wounded Giraffe slowed things down a little, but ultimately the 5ths once again found themselves winning the silver medal.

A tough set of results, but in every cloud there is a silver lining. The 2nd XI remain top of the league and the 4s’ batting was much better than in previous weeks. Plus, the 1s and 3s fought back from what were pretty dire situations. We move on.