1stXI Match Report: Beckenham v. Sevenoaks Vine
Saturday’s match was a meeting of the Premier’s two bottom clubs, both of whom would be looking to get their stuttering seasons underway with an overdue victory.
On a cool day, home skipper Alex Senn won the toss and elected to bat on a pitch that appeared to have a tinge of green in it. And so, the Beckenham scorer and old friend Charles awaited the start of play. Sadly it was a case of ‘same old, same old’ as the Beckenham score stood at 19-3 from 9 overs with the Sevenoaks Vine opening bowler Yodhin Punja taking all three, being able to extract some movement from the surface. On the credit side, newcomer Harri Aravinthan finally showed that he seems to have settled in to his new club and started a recovery of sorts with Nick Rigg. Vine skipper Luke Schlemmmer, having opened up with a miserly spell of left-arm spin, made a double change and brought Chris Vernon on for Punja and another left-armer, Kent’s James Logan. On at the other end. Vernon struck with his second ball trapping Rigg in front and then Logan repeated the procedure to make the score a miserable 37-5. Aravinthan was now well set and batting splendidly as he and Dave Moody shared a crucial stand of 25 before Vernon struck to remove the tall Australian and who then reduced Beckenham to 80-8. After Logan had taken his second wicket, the real home fightback began in earnest with Junaid Nadir adding staunch support to Aravinthan who was untroubled as he cruised to a most splendid fifty in 84 deliveries. Nadir curbed his natural aggressive instincts and allowed his partner to dictate proceedings as the stand grew in promising fashion with plenty of overs in the bag in which to post a reasonable score. When the partnership had reached 55, Nadir lofted the ball to Evert Bekker to end a great stand leaving Aravinthan unbeaten for an excellent 62 and the score 138. Vernon took the bowling award for his fine spell of 4-22 while Punja’s figures were 3-43. In the tatters of the Beckenham innings, the sum of four LBWs stands out indicating that players were playing across the line to straight deliveries and guilty of ignoring the cardinal batting rule which is knowing where your stumps are.
Beckenham made a promising start when Nadir had Piper driving to Alex Senn who took a splendid catch low down at 15. At the pavilion end, David Moody continued to adjust to English conditions and passed the bat regularly but without making a breakthrough as Evert Bekker began to score freely while Vernon acted as anchorman. The score mounted as Bekker raced to an excellent fifty in 44 balls before the introduction of Rob Clements’ left-arm spin broke through by trapping him in front for 51. Vine skipper Luke Schlemmer helped Vernon add 34 to take the Vine to within sight of victory before a direct hit by Moody ran him out. Kamran Khan, who had been bowling steadily from the newly-named ‘Neil Simpson End’, tried to repeat his Bickley heroics by striking twice in successive overs to cause some last-ditch mayhem with the Vine nearing victory added while Clements struck again with four needed before Bevan-Thomas hit the winning boundary to leave Beckenham rock-bottom and facing current champions Bexley next week.
Scorecard: https://beckenham.play-cricket.com/website/results/5093733 (external site)