OCHS Cricket Day 2012

The last weekend of the cricket season saw the first OCHS Cricket Day, with gorgeous weather conditions and two excellent teams set for a great day. 

The format of the game was two innings; one of twenty overs and the second of sixteen. The teams were London vs Rest of the world and the game was played at the beautiful Luton Town and Indians cricket ground.

London batted first, slightly over confident they crumbled to 26/4 within the first 6 overs. With Vishal Patel from Milton Keynes holding the innings together and some loose bowling by the ROW, London managed a respectable 111 from their allotted overs.

The teams comprised of some players who have played minor county cricket and others who have never played before creating the greatest possible mix. ROW in their first innings started slowly but strongly with former Bedfordshire cricketer Dhaval Naik hitting 55 not out and taking them to 124.

After tea, the London team was back in to bat 13 runs behind, this time much more steady. The promising Afghan youngster Faiyaz struck an excellent partnership with Manjit Singh who struck two huge sixes with one smashed out of the ground on to the road! London powered to 108 from 16 overs leaving ROW 95 to chase. Opening the bowling with Abbas Panju (who has not bowled since high school) the openers struggled to get quick runs on the board, Preetum Gharat from Norwich for the event, hit a few boundaries helping ROW along their way, but in the end the slow pace of the London spin bowlers Bhavesh Shah, Amit Patel, and Paresh Tailor simply made the task too difficult for the ROW. With just one over to go Subhash Salmalkar, an excellent cricketer from Mumbai, was left with the incredible task of hitting 29 from the last over.

Thanks to everyone at Luton Town and Indians and those who took part with a special thank you to Hitu Naik for umpiring the whole day. The London team won the first OCHS cricket day by 20 runs with everybody having an enjoyable day, raising £600 for OCHS and looking forward to next year!

Hemal Randerwala

If you would like to be involved with next year’s event in anyway please email hemal@ochs.org.uk