1s win again up north
A day full of unanticipated events off the field had one thing that remained constant – dominance on the field. The first of these“unanticipated events” being the unfortunate mistake made by the bus driver who had gone to Grange Cricket Club instead of Grange Loan – easily done as Arun would tell you. However once the bus had arrived at the correct ground, the boys were on their way to the Granite city for the second week running, this time the hosts being Stoneywood Dyce.
Having won the toss, stand in skipper Chayank Gosain decided to have a bat on a ‘slow’ track at People’s Park that would go on to produce inconsistent bounce through out the day. The opening pair of Fraser Burnett and Kyle Macpherson strode out to the middle and immediately set the tone for the day. The pair rotated strike expertly resulting in good balls ending in singles and the bad ones being punished to the boundary. An opening stand of 66 had put Carlton on the ascendency, however the partnership was brought to an end as the aforementioned inconsistent bounce claimed its first victim in the form of Burnett (36) who tried to pull a delivery, which just never got up and rattled into his stumps.
New batsmen Arun, and Kyle set about building another partnership, with the latter looking more confident as more balls hit the middle of his bat. The introduction of spin from Stoneywood, briefly slowed the flow of runs but more importantly for them brought about a frankly extraordinary run out which meant Kyle (22) started running from the non-strikers end as the ball was hit straight to mid-wicket and ended up back in the pavilion as Arun was unmoved. Tom Simpson made 8 before edging behind to Kidd. This brought Corne Dry to the middle who took a more aggressive approach against spin, hitting Lindsay for 2 huge sixes out of the ground (albeit a not very big one of that!). Arun kept batting with immense focus and guile, while Corne was punishing anything too short or too full. With the score now on 188-3 the pair were fully on top of the opposition, at which point Corne was eventually dismissed for a hard hitting 49 from 44 balls. With Ali Shah only making 5, Parker Neame was the next batsman to accompany Arun. The pair continued the attack on Stoneywoods bowling line-up as Arun stepped up his scoring rate and Parker dispatched loose deliveries on to the runway. Arun eventually fell for a marvellous 88 having played a superb anchoring role for the team. Late order contributions of 47 from Parker and 21 from Shujaa Khan meant Carlton finished on an excellent score 309-8 at the end of their allotted overs.
In reply the Stoneywood Dyce openers S. Coetzer and L. Lindsay got of to a reasonable start being 30-0 after 6. The former however, then picked out Raza at mid-on off the bowling of Corne. This inspired Carlton to apply more pressure, bowling with increased discipline and fielding with greater intensity leading to more dot balls. The result of this was clear to see as scoreboard pressure was mounting on the Stoneywood Dyce batsmen and eventually with the score on 39-1 the second wicket fell in the form of Lindsay (25) who hit a full toss from Raza straight to the man on the leg side boundary. Stoneywood were unable to form any sort of fluidity within their innings and never really looked in contention. However the day of “unanticipated events” wasn’t quite done yet, dark clouds started to loom over People’s park and it was a race against time for Carlton to reach the 20 overs required to gain a result. In the process Arun picked up another wicket just as the lightening caused the officials to take the players off the field and after a brief return the lightening was back and players had to go off with the score on 78 for 3 after 25.2 overs. As the floodgates opened it became apparent there would be no more play today.
Carlton headed home with a 68 run win, thanks to D/L, and went back to third in the table.
Shujaa Khan