Hornchurch 5th XI v B&PCC 5th XI - May 27th 2023

 Game played at a school ground. (Emerson Park Academy). Nice wicket though.

We lost the toss and despite our form they put us in to bat. It looked ominous when you compared the make up of both sides. We had a few very small boys who were playing adult cricket for the first time and many of our usual players including our strike bowler Nishant Khare were unavailable. 

Looking at the batting we had Mitchell Robinson and that was it other than a couple of potential new batters Muhammed Awais below right and Connor Binstead left.

The batting didn't go that well and their bowling was pretty good and we lost wickets at a fast rate with some ducks... Muhammed did okay, especially given that this was his first game playing league cricket and his first game for ages. I reckon if he comes back for me he could be an asset for our team as he looked good in the field and his one over looked promising for 4 runs. 

I had a decent game with the bat, I'm usually out for about 1 or 2, but I batted quite aggressively and managed a 4! We were all out by the 38th over for 124 runs. Which was a lot better than I imagined, but this was down to Mitchell Robinson's 54, his first 50 in adult cricket. It was a decent 50. He has a particular shot that I've seen him use in all the games so far and he deployed this shot (Slog Sweep) in this game and scored his initial runs, but then they placed a fielder there for the shot and then he changed it up and played a good innings with plenty of singles and drives. All in all very commendable, lets hope he can do this again and again with some support?  

J Then McGhee & S.Hammond were the main blokes with the bat and to be honest I didn't really take a lot of notice of their batting other than it was pretty conventional and effective, nothing flash, just regular shots pretty much all around the wicket and seemingly good enough to pick the gaps. Not really what you'd imagine to be 5th XI players. 

I had to bowl my eight overs at both of them and couldn't get a break through with my flippers and every-time I attempted my Leg-Breaks, they were too full and were hit for 4's. Unfortunately I attempted these a number of times before eventually given up on them. 

The batter I took more notice of was a younger player. Once we'd got McGhee we thought we might be in with more of a chance and that the next bat in might be a lesser player. Yeah... we got that wrong. That player was Rehman (RH) and he was a really positive player and again struck the ball really cleanly and powerfully. When he came on, our faster bowler Barath was brought back into the attack. Barath takes wickets and has bowled in first XI games previously. I was fielding at point and Barath wasn't bowling that well and was bowling down the leg-side and Rehman was guiding the ball to the boundary using a shot that was basically a paddle sweep!

Sitting - the captain Paul McKeon, Mitchell Robinson and Connor Binstead.