Hellooooo my favourite 40 people in the whole wide world!! Apologies for this being a week late, but at least this weekend was rained off so we can reminisce about last weekend’s 30 pointer!! Another great weekend for the club to back up the 40 pointer in GW15!

Brentham CC 1st XI vs Kenton CC 1st XI

The 1s travelled to promotion battling Brentham and were batting first after an important toss was won by skipper Dylan Assani. The 1s welcomed back leading run scorer and newly-wedded Viraj Patel to the side. Nobody wanted our boys to win more than Ealing Trailfinders who were taking on Southgate. After a couple of weeks off, Viraj came into the game with 533 runs to his name. The man was at home in the middle of the crease straight away, as he hit a club record-breaking 3rd 1st XI MCCL ton of the season to anchor our innings. Viraj hit 117 (132) including 11 fours and 3 sixes. This was genuinely a glorious innings, with some beautiful shots. You know you’re batting well when Kalpesh Kerai is telling you in Gujarati how well you’re batting! If you bowl left arm spin, just don’t bowl to this guy or your confidence will get hit, severely. Viraj brought up 273 runs in the 2 games against Brentham, averaging 136.5! He is now up to 650 runs for the season. His partnership of 152 with Owen O’Neill-Khaled ensured we had a strong total on the board. Owen hit 76 (73), less explosive than usual with the 5 fours and 1 six but it was an extremely important knock in the context of the game. Owen is up to 570 runs for the season himself! The last ball of the innings saw Prithvi Nakrani face against his own uncle and it was dot but the boys felt 247/7 including 45 was enough on the board. With the ball, Prithvi struck with his very first ball, with their opener chopping on. Dylan then got the next two scalps to have Brentham reeling at 30/3. Nobody was more happy than Trailfinders skipper Jamie Oakley who dropped the club’s Instagram account a message in support of the boys. “COME ON KENTON!!!!!” He said and 'Come on Kenton' they did, further reducing Brentham to 114/6. After their skipper and keeper put on a partnership of 60, this was broken by Hem Shah. He then cleaned up the rest of the Brentham batting as he ended with 4-fer, which took him to over 50 1st XI MCCL wickets and yet another run out, making up for all the times he was involved in run outs while batting. Shoutout to Owen for his fantastic piece of work to inflict a run out and to Viraj for his glove-work to bring up 100 1st XI MCCL dismissals in the same game as his ton. Jamie Oakley also said “If we [Trailfinders] win next weekend [vs Brentham], 2 jugs to the Kenton bank transfer.“ which makes it even more unfortunate that this weekend was washed out. Nevertheless, win by 66 runs.

Scorecard:https://kenton.play-cricket.com/website/results/7258416

Kenton CC 2nd XI vs Stoke Newington CC 2nd XI

The 2s hosted Stoke Newington at home knowing that safety would be secured with a win. The stakes have been high in the previous 3 games but the boys managed to pick up 3 wins and we’re hoping to make it 4. Skipper Roshan Patel won the toss and elected to bat first on what looked like a great deck to bat on. Cedric Mendes and Sohail Butt made great use of this deck as they put on 183 for the opening stand. Cedric was the first dismissed for a well made 51 (67), hitting 4 fours and 2 sixes. A little slow for Cedric but that’s because he took a back seat to watch the madness unfold from the other end. Club legend Sohail reminding the boys that he’s still got it as he hit 130 (114). Sohail hit 15 fours and 6 sixes and brought his century up in just the 24th over! His son Saif Butt was especially happy, telling his father “So-so” how good he is at batting. With this innings, he brought up 5000 runs for the club since Play-Cricket’s existence, the first Kenton player to do this. A handy 33 (29) from Dilan Wanniarachchi helped the boys up to the 300 mark, finishing 300/7. The boys perhaps felt they could’ve got 30/40 more seeing how well they started but were confident they could defend the total. Abhishek Jha got the party started, removing their skipper for 1 and then their number 3 for not many. Devm Parekh removed their hard hitting opener for 73 (34) to get SNCC 3 down and then their number 4 soon after to have them 4 down. A 102 run partnership between 2 guys who also played the 4s this season at home gave SNCC a small chance but the man with the golden arm Sohail Butt had other ideas. 4th XI skipper Deepak Singh told his boys over at Hackney Marshes that the ball needs to be given to Sohail. Seems like skipper heard him across the A406 and chucked Sohail the ball. Sohail bowled 7 overs for 43 runs but took 5 wickets. 4 of them bowled and 1 caught at point by starboy Devm. Lesson to be learnt here is bowl at the stumps and you will take wickets. Cedric finished the job with the final wicket and the boys bowled SNCC out for 264. Win by 36 runs.

Scorecard:https://kenton.play-cricket.com/website/results/7259092

Kenton CC 3rd XI vs Highgate CC 3rd XI

The 3s hosted Highgate 3s in a genuine 20 pointer as whoever won would most likely be safe in Division 1. With the score not synced to Play-Cricket nobody else had no idea what was going on in this game and there were some nerves as we all were hoping the boys could get the job done. Skipper Rishi Toor won the toss and we were bowling first. Jameel Shah got us going with the first before Pranav Shah got the 2nd and 3rd to break a couple partnerships before they looked like they would cause us problems. Zakirullah Khiyal returning to the 3s then ripped through the middle order as he took the next 4 wickets. 3 bowled and 1 great catch by Kusal Subasinghe. Jameel then finished off the tail to end with 4 himself. And 262 was the target to all but confirm the great escape for the 3s. Kaushal Patel (38) and Samit Patel (30) got the chase off to a flyer with their opening stand of 64. Danushka’s 61 (56) really swung the game in our favour as he hit 8 fours and 2 sixes. The boys were helped with 44 runs from E. Xtras but guess who was there at the end to finish the job? The saviour for the 3s this season Jameel as he was 42* (35) hitting 5 fours and 2 sixes. Jameel sealed the game with a huge six sparking huge celebrations at the Alan Digby Ground. 265/7 in 41.5 overs and a win by 3 wickets.

Scorecard:https://kenton.play-cricket.com/website/results/7259571

Stoke Newington CC 3rd XI vs Kenton CC 4th XI

The 4s made the road trip to Hackney Marshes to take on Division 4B champions Stoke Newington. The day started with “Love yourself” by Justin Bieber and “Castle on the hill” by Ed Sheeran in Devesh Kerai’s car. The boys eventually arrived and were greeted with quite possibly the best Stoke Newington deck one has ever seen. Skipper Deepak Singh won the toss and we were bowling first. Wow, 4 toss wins out of 4, when was the last time that happened? Anyways, the first breakthrough came via a great piece of fielding from Naseer Mangal to inflict a run out, as keeper Devesh took off the bails. The next partnership of 240 between their other opener and number 3 took the game away from us to be honest, albeit we did help with some poor fielding efforts. After they were told we hold the highest partnership of the division this season with 260* from Soham Khurjekar and Samit Patel in the 10 wicket win vs South Hampstead, they said challenge accepted but it was challenge failed 3 balls later. A couple of drop catches and many ground misfields will never help your case. 4-63 from the spin of Roshan Madhaparia and a direct hit from long-on by Ravi Jilka turned 266/1 into 308/6 before SNCC finished on 330 which proves how badly the fielding hurt the 4s. Roshan Madhaparia aka John Crampbell hit his first Kenton CC half-century opening the batting as he hit 8 fours in his 56 (80) before he retired hurt with cramps. Sahil Goswami also hit 50 as he ended on 58, hitting 7 fours and 2 genuinely gigantic sixes. Unfortunately the boys could only manage 242/7 in 45. Loss by 88 runs.

https://kenton.play-cricket.com/website/results/7259931

So, 30 points it was in GW16 and a washout in GW17. Totw for GW16 is on Instagram if you haven’t seen it, as is Waaris Deen vs Puneet Pattni in the Kenton six-hitting challenge so give that a watch too. GW17 was the penultimate round of the season so I guess that means next weekend is the ultimate round of the season? Regardless, hopefully it’s a 40-pointer!

If you haven’t already, get your name down for Curry-Oke this Saturday and also club day as there are still a couple of spots available in teams. More information about club day will be released in the next couple of days so stay tuned for that! Hope you all had Bruno Fernandes as captain in your FPL teams as we all need to do our best to finish below Samit in the club's mini-league. See you all next week (hopefully)!