1stXI Match report: Beckenham v. Sandwich
Fresh from the previous weekend’s win, Beckenham welcomed skipper Alex Senn back from his light fandango skipping and the visit of one of this scorer’s favourite clubs, Sandwich Town. Having inspected a good-looking pitch and greeted the umpires, it was time to await the arrival of Shiv, formerly with Folkestone, as colleague for the day and, of course, the result of the toss.
Town skipper Matt van Poppel called correctly and elected to bat. From the outset, Dave Moody began asking questions of the batting with his pace and bounce while, at the other end, Junaid Nadir moved in smoothly and hit the right lines immediately. It wasn’t long before Ben Niewoudt touched Nadir to keeper Balmforth and then Harri Aravinthan hung on to a superb low catch at slip to send Tom Burnap packing off Moody. Worse was to follow as the aggressive Zack Fagg drove Nadir tamely to Aravinthan to make Town groggy at 21-3, a position that worsened when keeper Kai Smith got one from Nadir that hit the shoulder of the bat giving Ross Piller a simple catch – 23-4. The left-handed Tom Chapman tried desperately to get his side’s innings on an even keel and was given staunch support by Ben Chapman. Skipper Senn then made changes with the metronomic Kamran Khan on at the pavilion end and the off-spin of one-time conqueror of Aravinda de Silva, Jason Bilimoria, at the Neil Simpson End. The veteran Bilimoria has slotted seamlessly into the side as senior off-spinner in the absence of the recovering Johan Malcolm and, having already shown that he could extract turn, had Chapman sailing down the wicket to give Balmforth an easy stumping. Khan then struck almost immediately when Alex Smith edged behind and Balmforth took a superb catch. The seam-spin partnership then snapped up two more wickets with regulation catches for Moody and Rigg before the towering West Australian ended a valiant 9th-wicket stand by blasting through Ben Smith’s defences for an LBW decision to leave Town almost out for the count on 65-9. It was Harri Aravinthan who administered the coup de grace as Bilimoria, moving athletically at mid-off, covered much ground to take an excellent catch as Town crashed to 74 all out. This had been a brilliant performance by Beckenham with all the bowlers performing superbly backed up by a magnificent fielding display. For Town, reflecting on a miserable day with the bat, could be forgiven for remembering the immortal words of Keith Reid, “our local picture house was playing a bad man movie”, when in fact they had faced five ‘bad men’ all armed with a red sphere!
The Beckenham reply got off to a bright start against Grant and Alex Smith with Nick Rigg continuing to show excellent form, rapier-like blade flickering purposefully to get the scoreboard moving while Alex Senn at last began to show some of his good early-season form. With 34 on the board, Rigg was bowled by Grant for 20 before the partnership between Senn (22*) and James Fear (21*), also looking to have returned to form, knocked off the remaining runs in quick time, the innings lasting just under the hour to the dismay of a few spectators who had just arrived to watch some cricket! Needless to say, many crisp ones were then consumed in a display of unrestrained revelry with the prospect of a visit to leaders Hayes next week and the visit of Minster to close the half. These are two games this scorer badly wants to win.
Scorecard: https://kcl.play-cricket.com/website/results/5093732 (External site)