The modern way seems to be that ‘good games’ of cricket are 300 run plus shoot outs. Flat tracks and more boundaries (and sixes) than you can shake a stick at as bowlers suffer at the hands of ever more dominant batters.

Twickenham CC’s first XI game with newly-promoted Harrow St Mary’s was a welcome antidote to that. An excellent cricket wicket, with plenty to encourage bat and ball, saw two pretty evenly-matched sides go toe to toe. Ultimately, it was the Ts depth – both with bat and ball – that just saw them home.

Skipper Carlos Nunes, back in the fold and leading from the front, won the toss, had a bowl and promptly took the new ball himself. It wasn’t exactly Andy Roberts roaring in at the Recreation Ground in Antigua, but Nunes’s diddbly-dobbles soon saw the Ts make inroads in to the visiting top order. Nunes impressive 3-23 off 10 was a work of art.

The visitors nonetheless recovered. Pritesh Vaghela stuck around for 21, but it was Syed Kazmi who gave the innings a bit of backbone, plodding along for 51 off 107. A middle order collapse none the less blew the wind out of HSM’s sails as last week’s second team centurion, Phil Nash, came to the party with the ball; his 5-37 off 9 and a bit was pivotal in keeping HSM well below 200.

In reply, the Ts started positively. Middlesex’s Tom Barber pushed it through at a rate of knots from the Hampton Road End, but Scott Newman and Darshan Chohan seemed largely unperturbed. Yet, wickets slowly began to fall. Harindu Gunasekara got Newman caught at first slip, whilst Chohan hoiked him to long on. Don Manuwelge (41 in 62) and Ben Leale-Green (27 in 44) both made headway, but they, too, feel before onlookers in the pavilion really felt confident that the job was done.

Former Middlesex player Ravi Patel turned the screw with a tight spell (1-22 from 10) and when skipper Nunes was out at 114-6 the Ts were beginning to look just a little nervy.

It’s at that point that the issue of depth came in to play. HSM were struggling to get 10 overs out of their fifth bowler, as Patel gambled. He bowled his key bowlers out in the hope of taking wickets. Indeed, had the game gone all the way to the wire then the visitors would have had to have found at least two overs from someone who hadn’t bowled at all thus far.

The Ts, meanwhile, had to find 64 runs from their lower order. Parminder Singh can bat, and his 13 helped, but it was the cool heads of Phil Nash, Sanjit Sandhu and Tom Field that ultimately got the job done. Block the good balls, hit the bad ones and run like the wind. Nash’s excellent 29 (off 42 balls) was the key knock, but the undefeated 20 runs that Sandhu and Field put together were what got the Ts over the line.

Moving forward, HSM are clearly finding their way. But they have a number of serious cricketers and they’ll no doubt find themselves in contention in more games than not. The Ts, meanwhile, took the strain; Ishi Soni and Gurjit Sandhu will bring more firepower to the bowling attack when they return and the batting line is a decent one. Reasons to be confident as they move on to Ealing next week.