When: 25 JUL 2015

Where: Drammen

Strømsø Cricket Club 163/7 (23.5 ov)

Aliens Cricket Club 162/9 (29.3 ov)

Strømsø Cricket Club, - Won by 3 wickets

Written by J. Cameron

See the scorecard at CricHQ

A surprisingly bright and sunny day met us at Drammen Cricket ground, where Aliens CC were to take on relegation candidates, Strømsø CC. Given that promotion and relegation were on the line, this was a huge game for both teams.

With long grass and a strong bowling attack behind him, Dave won the toss and elected to field. The Aliens started off poorly, with some pretty shoddy fielding, some terrible catching and some substandard bowling. This helped Strømsø got off to a great start, where they raced along to 100-0 off the first 15 overs. Luckily, the drinks break provided the skip and vice skip 10 minutes to rally their troops. Damien let his frustration’s be known with a passionate speech about our lackluster attitude to the game so far. What he said worked though, since the bowling unit immediately started turning things around, help by some much improved fielding andthreestunning catches, one from Damien running in from the square-leg boundary and diving forward, one from Dave who initally lost the ball in the sun before lundging a couple of metres to his leftto take it and a thirdfrom Damon, holding on to a zinger smashed back at him off Strømsø’s most dangerous batsman. With the top order out, wickets started falling regularly and the run rate fell. In the end, Strømsø made it to 186-9 off their allotted 30 overs. Max (6 overs, 3 for 48) was expensive but picked up 3 crucial wickets. He was well supported by all the other bowlers, who bowled much tighter spells in the second 15. Other wicket takers were Pratheesh (2), Dave (2) and Damon (2).

Clive (25 off 14 balls) and Damien (72* off 62 balls) opened the batting and got us off to a great start, adding35for the first wicket. The first couple of overs were relatively quiet, but Clive opened up in the 3rd, hitting 2x4s and a 6, before getting out LBW to a ball that seemed to be going over the top. Jamie (21 off 18 balls) was next in and he and Damien put on 30 odd runs before Jamie got out missing a straight one (again). Next in was Pratheesh (14 off 13 balls) who looked good before getting out to one of the slowest balls of all time, which took his edge, bounced off the keeper’s gloves and looped to first slip. No worries though, since Damien was going strong at the other end. Another useful partnershipdeveloped between Waqar (15 off 16 balls) and Damien, before Waqar got out slicing the ball to backward point. By now the Aliens needed about 50 runs to win off about 62 balls. Given we’ve been in better situations than that and lost, there were still a few of us on the sidelines who were a little on edge. However, our fears were unfounded since Max (19* off 28 balls) and Damien brought us home with almost 2 overs to spare. There were a couple of really tight overs (as expected when Max is battingJ) which gave us a bit of a scare, but Damien opened up and finished the game off in style. My highlights of our batting were the 6 Clive hit, flicking the ball off his toes over square leg and Max’s 3 through the covers in the 27thover to get himself off strike. It was a good batting performance by all since we produced regular partnerships of 30 runs, avoided clusters of wickets and kept the run rate in check the wholeinnings.

In the end, Aliens reached 186-4 off 28.1 overs, which is a bloody great comeback after being well behind after the first 15 overs.

Damien has been the stalwart of the batting lately, batting his way to 6x50s in 8 innings and averaging a mammoth 82!