Basel CC VS Alpine CC
14th August 2016, Bachgraben, BaselBasel CC won the toss and elected to bat first
Basel CC: 171
Alpine CC: 156
Another scorching hot day at the Bachgraben Oval, blue skies and temperatures around the 30s, and the hosts made good use of the time they had while waiting for Alpine CC to arrive at the Stadium by producing some of the best catches and in general showing very high standard of ability during the warmup training in a long time. And what good it brought them too!
After winning the toss, the in form captain Jack put Alpine in to field and gave Basel pristine use of the batting wicket first up. An accurate bit of opening bowling for Alpine saw Basel lose 2 early wickets and had the side on the back foot with the score at 15-2 within the first 3 overs. But Alpine were about to get a lesson in rebuilding. The batting partnership of the season unfolded (i wasnt there last week) as Jack and Julian steadied the ship and then punished the bad balls as they trucked on to a happy 80-2 in 15 overs. The partnership was full of pull- and cut-shots, flourishing drives and solid blocks. Plenty of singles and even more boundaries hailed down on Alpine. However the fun was not to last and Jack got carried away on 31 and missed a straight one, only to have Julian follow on 33 a few overs later with another terrible shot to throw away his wicket, the 3rd in as many innings. But to the rescue came all the other Basel batsmen. It was a solid team batting performance with useful knocks from Sunny, Siva, Pramod, Jay, Shabir (who almost repeated his smashing antics from the week before only to have a fielder come in between the ball and the rope on the 2nd attempt to hit a six), Arman, well basically everyone in the end, to make sure we got a descent total of 171 on the board. The only thing we could have done a bit better was bat the 35 overs but on such a hot day, some things must be forgiven.
The team was confident with the total they had to defend, and after munching through the curry that Alpine brought along, the lads were ready to put their catching practice from the morning up to the test once play resumed after the break. But for chances to be created and catches to be put up for grabs, a good ball must come first. And it wasnt just one, it was 150 of them. The performance with the ball was again, in all departments, phenomenal. Opening spells of quick, aggressive, pressure bowling set the tone with Jack and Sunny bowling in tandem. Backed up by pure quality and class from Tanmay, who picked up three, and a suspect man of the match performance by Pramond with a 5 wicket haul! With only 5 wides and not a single dropped catch during the afternoons bowling, a huge amount of respect must go to all the players. It was a hot day and we made sure we made the absolute most of every chance, even getting the occasional Alpine batsmen with both chances, with Vishal taking 5 catches behind the stumps and also worth mentioning, an absolute snorter taken by Arman at gully off Tanmay. Things got nice and close in the end, Alpine hanging on with their last pair needing 20 off the last 5 overs, but a cool and collected captain Jack brought back Pramond to seal Alpines fate with 15 runs short of Basels 171.
A very big thank you to the umpires and also all the players for their huge effort in the hot sun and the support everyone gave each other through the game. That, i think, is the main reason why we won the key moments in the game, got the big wickets at the right time and got away with a well-deserved, hard fought and true to its word “team win”.
Julian Wessel