Munich, 13th May 2023
Today was a game set up for perfect English conditions, the ground was wet, the sky was cloudy and mild intermittent showers gracing us with their presence making sure we never get warm. MCC won the toss and put the Taufkirchen boys into bat with a plan to take advantage of those wet conditions to restrict them down to a low total and in hope that batting conditions improve by the second innings as it starts to get dry during the day.
We started well with Waqas striking early in the very first over with no runs on the board yet. But this was followed by a slow but steady partnership of 72 runs between Aman and Rupayan for the second wicket. But we finally struck through them with Niraj and were able to break that partnership through the wicket of Rupayan.
After that it was Niraj going through their batting line up one after the other and ended up taking a career best figures of 7-15 for this 10 overs. He took crucial wickets and never let the batsman settle down to get a decent partnership going between them. Even the singles were hard to come by and the batsman kept on succumbing to the pressure from some magical spin from Niraj with Jonty pulling some awesome slip catches as well. Deep chipped in with some quick couple of wickets at the end to help us wrap up their innings. Overall, it was a great comeback from the MCC guys with opposition being from 72-1 to 107 all out.
The MCC innings started with Jonty and Vis at the crease and got the scoreboard ticking along at a decent run rate, but we really couldn’t get a big partnership and kept losing wickets at regular intervals through some tight bowling at great catching from the Taufkirchen boys with the chase getting crucial at 53-5. Which is when walked in our savior Mr. Foskett, who paced his innings really well. He looked in great touch, played shots all around the park and held the fort with one end till the game was done and wrapped up the chasing with a smashing boundary giving the MCC boys a well-deserved victory. Lots of positives to draw from here with of course some improvement areas as well. But the team came along very well in a crunch situation to pull of a tight victory. So looking forward to an even better performance in the T20s next week.
Verstappen
