Twos take the strain

By Nihal Tomar

The Twickenham second string were looking to avoid a hat-trick of defeats as they entertained a rampant Stanmore side who were top of the tree. After winning the toss stand-in skipper Nakul Vishvanath decided to stick the league leaders in on a lively looking track.

It was an innings of two halves. The new ball pairing of Pushtak Arsikere and Dom Thamby did a reasonable job in keeping the visitors in check. Once Twickenham managed to get Stanmore's highly rated skipper out the hosts then managed to crank up the pressure on a side that are very top heavy in their batting line up.

Sam Cliffe and Phil Nash did very well when they came on for their respective spells. Nash was very unlucky not to add further wickets to his tally as Stanmore's number 3 looked scratchy from the start. On the other hand Cliffe kept running in with purpose and deserved his 3fer.

However, from having Stanmore 70 odd for 5 Twickenham then somehow managed to loosen their control on the innings. Credit however should be given to Stanmore's number 3 who played a gutsy innings and managed to steer his team out of a potentially dangerous situation. Nakul Vishvanath rightfully decided to bring himself on which in turn dried up the runs and helped Twickenham build pressure to break Stanmore's lower order resistance. Despite a few lusty blows at the end Twickenham managed to restrict Stanmore to 183 in the 50th.

The run chase didn't quite go to plan as Twickenham lost both openers in quick succession. Pushtak showed great class and elegance in an eventful innings. The young dasher took it upon himself to smash their brisk left armer into the church after some kind pleasantries were exchanged between the pair the ball before. However, Stanmore had the last laugh as he was bowled for 28.

Twickenham's hopes were left on Nash and Nikhil Nomula to kick start our chase. Unfortunately one was given out LBW and the other left a straight one (I will let you decide which of them did what!). With Stanmore smelling blood and a potential 32 point lead over their opponents, Vishvanath and Ajmal Allahdad managed to ease any potential worries by negating the battery of fast bowling with some delightful stroke play and power (from Ajmal, of course). Unfortunately, the heavens opened up as Twickenham had to settle for a solitary point which on a positive note is one more than the previous two games.

Overall it was a great game of cricket played between two fiercely competitive sides. Besides one dropped chance Twickenham fielded well as a unit, each player backed one another and did really well to restrict a top of the league side to just 183 on the Green. If I were to be hyper critical one thing we didn't do is perhaps go for the kill with Stanmore 5 down for not a lot. But I suppose all good teams manage to dig in during tough periods and reap the rewards later in the innings and that is what Stanmore did.

With the exception of Pushtak and Ajmal I felt our batters struggled to come to terms with their bowling attack. From a neutral's perspective it would have been intriguing to see which direction the game would have headed towards had the weather not intervened but in the grand scheme of things and the league permutations I guess a losing draw is a positive to take out from the game as a whole. Let's take the positives and with reinforcements likely to arrive back into the side (pending no activity north of the club) then I'm sure Twickenham will be back to winning ways in no time.