What potentially started out as a season defining match for the season became an ugly, niggly match, not helped by some "disputable" umpiring at one end as both sides were dealt the same poor hand in some of the decisions made during the game.
Dave Hickey had no hesitation in batting first when he won the toss, knowing that a 25 point win in the final timed game of the season would close the gap significantly on our visitors. With Old Southendians sailing off into the distance, this was a battle between 2nd & 3rd to fight for the remaining promotion place. The loss of Tom Austin to the eighth ball of the match wasn't the best of starts. A 26 run partnership between Jamie Walton and Lesiba Ngoepe seemed to steady the innings before Jaime fell to a smart slip catch. Lesiba was the next to fall, just as he was getting into the groove. His mistimed pull was caught at short mid-on to have us at 51-3. There followed a 64 run partnership between Will Howard and Jack Plom, before Jack was mysteriously given out LBW for 26. Will soon followed with the team's top score of 43 just after the halfway point of our innings. At this point, Aztecs seemed to put a stranglehold on the game. We had reached 100 runs in 18.2 overs, but it wasn't till 36.5 overs that we reached 150. In the meantime, we had lost Jack Newton to another strange decision and runs were looking hard to come by. Tom Arnold and Dave fell within eight balls of each other and it looked like we might struggle to reach 200. In the unusual position of no. 10 came Jack Kliber, who's scoops and reverse hitting were a revelation as he put on 40 for the ninth wicket with Sam Bear to get us past maximum batting points (should we lose) before Sam fell to a slower ball, Alex Rickenbach couldn't get the strike back to Jack in the final over as he fell to the first ball, leaving Jack stranded on 32 from only 24 balls faced. Reaching 220 was a helpful score to defend.
An incident involving a stray ball just before the start of the Aztecs innings seemed to rile them and they started as though the game should become a 20 over slog-fest as they smashed 30 runs from the first two overs. This was halted as Jack Plom's brilliantly disguised slower ball deceived the batsman to give us the first wicket. His next ball at the start of his third over saw the other opener caught on the boundary by Tom Arnold. It was in Tom's first over that saw another controversial decision saw the third wicket fall. A low catch by Jack Plom gave Lesiba gave him his first five wicket haul in his last league game of the season before his return to South Africa before an outstanding catch from Tom Arnold saw the visitors five down with more than half of the overs due still to be faced. The fall of the sixth wicket just before the final drinks break made Aztecs decide to shut up shop and try and deny us the win that would put a dent in their promotion push. Wicket seven fell to the first ball immediately after drinks, and wickets eight and nine saw only 13 runs scored in eight overs as Lesiba proceeded to clean up the lower order and get five wickets, However, it was the return of Tom Arnold, forcing the batsman to fend off a rising ball to a grateful Tom Austin that saw victory achieved with less than five overs to go and a 53 run victory against our closest league rivals.
The difference between 2nd and 3rd is now down to two points with only four overs games remaining If Aztecs win their last four games, they will be promoted, no matter what we do. We can only keep performing as we did today and hope someone does us a favour.
No match report next week as I'm away. Maybe the captain will take up the mantle short term?
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