Match Report: 3s vs Wembley CC 3s (04/06/2022)

Toss: Kenton won the toss and elected to bat.

The final overs game for the first part of the season saw Kenton travel to second in the table Wembley. A debut for Chirag Purohit (more on him later) and a welcome back to Saif after his excursions in the 2s for majority of the season thus far. Kenton won the toss and elected to bat on a damp wicket. With no sun in sight, the hope was for indentations to occur and to only make batting harder alongside score board pressure. Kenton lost karan early, but saif and krunal set about seeing off the new ball and ticked along to 40-1. Unfortunately, Kenton lost two quick wickets to make that 50-3. Enter Pranav dave, and alongside saif they took on the Wembley attack with a measured approach. Kenton were at 140-3 with the best part of 13 overs left and a score in excess of 230 seemed on the cards. However, Wembley are not second without good reason and fought back, taking regular wickets and showing the track to be one difficult to start on as a batsmen. Kenton stuttered and stumbled to 205 all out in the final over, with a key contribution from the skipper, samit. In the reply, Wembley lost their skipper earlier to a peach of a delivery from Ravi. The bowlers continued to bowl well and kept the score rate down, building pressure and then the crucial moment. Wembley no.3, Anees, looking for the short leg side boundary, attempted a lovely heave only to sky it. But Kenton couldn’t take the chance that the bowlers deserved and with that came the start of a big innings. Kenton plugged away, and took regular wickets, reducing Wembley to 116-5, but then Annes along with Wembley two overseas plundered the bowling and took the score to 190-7. Wembley required16 from 8 overs, 3 wickets in hand, 2 set batsmen but the light fading. Cue the drama…Karan itching to bowl all game, came steaming in…bang! 6 runs. His second ball, wallop! 4 runs. Wembley now only require 6 with Annes requiring 5 for his 100. Surely only one winner from here. Bowled him!!! Middle stump. Karan has officially arrived at Kenton CC! Enter no.10, 3 balls, 3 plays and misses. We move on to the next over. That honour went to the fore mentioned Chirag P. First ball, with the field up, crash..four runs! Disaster! Ball 2, no run. Ball 3, he charges, and there goes his off stump, pegged back! Now all results possible. By this time both Wembley 1s and 2s have joined the sidelines to support the home side. Loving the stage provided, Chirag delivers the perfect ball to a no.11, off side off, cutting back in to clip the top of 2. Kenton win! Wild scenes, one topless Karan ala flintoff and the skipper can only think about how crucial his 3 runs in the first innings have turned out. The season has well and truly started. Welcome to KCC madhouse Karan and Chirag.