Captain: Sundar Viswanathan

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14/05/11 - OPCC 3rd XI vs West End Esher CC 3rd XI  - Won by 6 wickets

21/05/11 - Frimley CC 3rd XI vs OPCC 3rd XI  - Won by 105 runs

A solid start after losing the toss on a gorgeously sunny day saw us get to 35 before a hungover Bala played early, got the leading edge and was off for a short kip beyond the boundary. Pradeep M then joined Pradeep N and they played sensibly but a rush of blood saw Pradeep N to pull one straight into the hands of square leg. At 58 for 2, and the pitch playing VERY slow and VERY low, we were aiming for 200 but things went rapidly downhill. Nos 3 to 9 came and went, some to good straight balls and others to wild swings. In the meantime, Pradeep M was playing a masterful innings at the other end. After a very well made half century, Pradeep M was unlucky as an attempted sweep got the bottom of the bat and went straight up.

At 133 for 9, we would have been happy with 150 as Nos 10 and 11 were in - Udayan hadn't held a bat for over a year and Arvind (a late replacement for an injured Vinod Giri) hadn't held one in over 10!! Luckily, the opposition skipper came on to bowl and dished out a few dollies to get their confidence up. That spell was the turning point as Arvind started playing through the line of everything that was bowled at him and was regularly finding the boundary. As the partnership grew, the opposition bowling and fielding got ragged and we took full advantage. Arvind reached fifty in rapid time while Udayan was solid at the other end, even hitting a few lusty blows of his own. By the time Frimley CC finally got Arvind on 59, our 10th wicket partnership was 105 and the total 238 - a great score given the nature of the pitch.

With a great total on the board, the objective was to be disciplined with the ball and bowl stump to stump. Our bowlers did just that with not a single wide all innings.

Sunny and Ninju started well bowling at good pace and picking up the first three wickets. Frimley did string together a couple of decent partnerships through some chancy shots and some swipes to the leg side - Fawad being particularly unlucky as he was getting plenty of turn and zip off the wicket. The resistance was however short-lived as Fawad picked up their top scorer courtesey Udayan holding a smart catch at long-on, while Suresh rattled the stumps of the other.

The tail was wrapped up quickly by Suresh, Pradeep and the skipper. A very satisfying win as we were able to bowl Frimley CC below 133 (the score at which our 9th wicket fell!)with 8 of the 10 wickets coming through bowled/lbw.

The win sees us top of the table at these early stages.

28/05/11 - OPCC 3rd XI vs Caterham 3rd XI  - OPCC Conceded

04/06/11 - OPCC 3rd XI vs Woodmansterne 3rd XI  - Lost

11/06/11 - Warlingham CC 3rd XI vs OPCC 3rd XI  - Winning Draw

OP skipper won the toss and opted to bowl on a wet, green and uncovered pitch. It was a pleasant surprise that we had a XI in place even while Warlingham's captain was on the phone calling and pleading for players to join. A father who came to drop his kid for the match was forced to stay back and play in the XI as their make-shift opener!

Warlingham's other opening batsman was 6ft+ West Indian who had more chat than strokes to offer. He mixed caution and aggression but we bowled in the right areas and the pitch had uneven bounce to keep us interested. Our opening bowlers Ninju and Sunny started well picking up 2 quick wickets within the first 5 overs. But then their captain (73) and No 3 (23) played a sensible innings. The run-rate was never over 4 but they kept wickets in hand and made a strong push at the end of the innings. Suresh bowled an exceptional spell and there were several inside edges and catches that fell marginally short of our fielders. Debutant Ameetabh extracted good movement off the pitch and was rewarded with 2 wickets. All 8 wickets that fell were clean bowled - evidence of the line we bowled and the fact that their umpires refused to give any LBWs! Extras contributed to a healthy 28 runs with plenty of wides and no-balls.

Bala opened the innings with Sunny and yet again was off to a good start. Sunny threw his bat at a ball well outside of off stump and got a top edge that was caught in the covers. Bala was next to fall, unlucky to get a snorter that he gloved to the keeper. Ninju and Alex settled in and played positive cricket. Warlingham seemed to have only 2 bowlers and one of them bowled a marathon 13 over spell (of the 34 overs!). Ninju tried to clear the ropes and picked the only fielder in the deep. John and Udayan didn’t bother the scorers much. Just when we thought we were out of the match, debutants Ameetabh and Michael put together a brilliant partnership. Ameetabh hit several lusty blows (on his way to a quick fire 43) including one massive six while Michael was content in blocking and scoring the singles. With dark clouds looming large over us, Ameetabh's assault was helpful in us getting close to the required run-rate. Just when the skies started to open, their West Indian opener and keeper handed over the gloves to their skipper and decided to bowl the last over. He was quick and debutant Kugan managed to see him off. In hind-sight if we had stopped the game an over earlier we may have secured a winning draw. The 2-run last over played in near darkness meant we had to settle for a losing draw. Good all round effort especially from the debutants - Ameetabh, Michael and Kugan.

18/06/11 - Mitcham CC 3rd XI vs OPCC 3rd XI - Abandoned

25/06/11 - OPCC 3rd XI vs Chobham CC 3rd XI - Chobham CC Conceded

02/07/11 - OPCC 3rd XI vs Kingstonian CC 3rd XI  - Winning Draw

A glorious day meant only one thing... another toss lost by Sundar and being put into bat by the Khans of Kingstonian, a team that was on top of the league at the start of play. Christian and Bala opened the innings and after seeing off a few overs Christian played some lovely strokes to get us motoring while Bala was steady at the other end. That prompted the introduction of an "off-spinner" who Christian managed to hit straight down the throat of the one person on the boundary - that put an end to a promising innings and the start of our many gifts (6 in all) to the spinner (yes you guessed it right... Khan). Khan kept sending down dollies and we kept losing our stumps or finding the fielders until Michael Boulton and John played sensibly to put on a great unbeaten partnership of 70 runs to get us to a good score. 193 was always going to be hard to chase but getting 10 wickets in 43 on the OPCC track without gifts was not going to be easy either.

We started off extremely well with Ninju and Suresh bowling very tidy spells giving hardly anything to hit. Once Ninju picked up a couple of wickets, we were in business. A couple of decent partnerships then made things difficult but we were always looking like getting wickets while the opposition was clearly batting for a draw. We tried our best and had them 9 down with five overs to go but the last pair batted sensibly and saw them home. Had a couple of dropped catches and a few very very close lbw shouts gone our way, things could have been very different!

All in all, disappointing that we didn't pick up all the points but nevertheless a great team performance.

09/07/11 - OPCC 3rd XI vs Ripley CC 3rd XI  - Won

3rd XI beat Ripley by 24 runs
 
OP 3rd XI earned a much deserved victory against Ripley, one of the top teams in the league. OP's stand-in-skipper lost the toss and was asked to bat. With only 2 of our regular bowlers in the playing XI the plan was to play out as many overs as possible. Openers Christian and Pradeep put together a quick partnership with Pradeep finding the boundaries with ease. Despite a good start, we lost 4 quick wickets and it was left to Bala and Chris Gardner to steady the ship. They put together a 50 run partnership with Chris scoring most of the runs while Bala was seen perfecting his forward defence. A few more wickets fell in quick succession and we were staring at a sub 120 score when debutant Hasimran walked in and clouted the ball all over the park. Along with Chris, he put together a game changing partnership of 45 runs. Chris reached his 50 and helped us get to a defendable score of 163 and crucially we played out 46 overs.
 
 
Our new ball bowlers Pradeep and Sunny got us off to a dream start as we snatched the first wicket early and at the end of 10 overs Ripley had crawled their way to 26-1. Their No 3, an aggressive bat who scored 55, made us look poor on the field. The ever reliable Suresh was taken for nearly 8 runs an over and finished his first spell wicketless. Ollie, Chris and Michael bowled well but couldn't break the partnership. At the end of 24 overs Ripley were 100-1 and we looked well out of the game. Pradeep, Suresh and Sunny had other ideas though and produced some 'Ripley's believe it or not' moments on the field. Suresh bowled their No 3 in his first over of the second spell.
In the very next over, Pradeep much to our disbelief, caught something flying in the air and it happened to be the ball! And Sunny bowled an unplayable delivery which their No 4 meekly guided to Christian's safe hands. Pradeep and Suresh then proceeded to rip through their batting line up and we bowled them out in 46 overs to win by 24 runs. Special mention to John for hanging in the field despite having pulled his hamstring, Suresh for bowling a marathon overs with bloodied fingers, Pradeep for showing us how to win close contests, and Hasimran for his fearless batting on debut.

16/07/11 - Southern Railways and Kenley 2nd XI vs OPCC 2nd XI - Abandoned

23/07/11 - Staines & Laleham CC 3rd XI vs OPCC 3rd XI  - Lost

With only 10 players in the team, we came agonisingly close to pulling off a victory against the league toppers. Last year, Staines had crushed us by scoring 300 runs after being 55-5. Their home ground has the shortest straight boundaries in the league and we needed a good score to even make a match out of it. Put into bat, we lost 4 quick wickets and it was left to Bala and Amit to steady the ship. Amit took the attack to the opposition and the usually chirpy slip corden had nothing to offer when the pair scored 80 runs in less than 15 overs.
Bala survived a few close LBW shouts early-on but then settled into his accumulator role. However, with the score at 160 in 36 overs, both Amit and Bala fell in quick succession. The tail refused to cave in and the last pair of Udayan and Suresh played out 6 consecutive maiden overs to leave Staines to chase 200 in 45 overs.
 
We started well with both Amit and Niranjan taking a wicket each in their opening spell. However their No 3 and 4 batsmen, settled in and knocked the ball around. Amit bowled an excellent spell, and Suresh and Niranjan beat the bat regularly but were unlucky to not find the edges. At drinks Staines were 101-2 in 25 overs needing five runs an over to win the game. Right after drinks, Udayan provided us the breakthrough by getting rid of the two set batsmen. But we knew that their middle order was strong and we had to bowl well to defend the score. With short boundaries, umpires who were too eager to call the wides and not give the LBWs, and us being 1 man short on the field, meant that we were always fighting a losing battle. Pradeep yet again provded us the break through by taking two quick wickets in the 39th over and the game was very much on the balance. Staines were 8 down but needed only 15 runs from the last 5 overs. Debutant David produced a stunning piece of fielding to effect a run-out in 41 over but then their No 9 and 10 ran for everything and knocked down the runs in the penultimate over.
 
A game we could have easily won, had we had the extra batsmen (to play out 52 overs), bowler (to take the last wicket) or just another man on the field to cut the singles. Great team effort - this is the third consecutive week were we have played out all 95 overs and nearly won against 3 out of the 4 teams ahead of us in the league. We should now aim to win the rest of the remaining 6 matches to push for a top 4 finish.

30/07/11 - OPCC 3rd XI vs Wallington CC 3rd XI  - Won

Wallington won the toss and put us into bat on a pitch that we would have batted on in any case. We didn't start off very well losing our first wicket before troubling the scorer but Bala and Sundar steadily saw us through the first ten overs before Bala played all around a straight one. In a moment of madness, the skipper then gave his wicket away holing to mid on in the final over of the spell their one good bowler and Pradeep was bowled first ball by the same bowler capping off a very good spell of disciplined fast bowling. That saw us go from 39 for 1 to 39 for 4 within a space of 6 balls!

Vinod Giri and Ameetabh however counter-attacked brilliantly to get us to the 90s while maintaining a healthy run rate. However, when they lost their wickets and we lost another one cheaply, we were staring at a total in the low 100s. John Sutherland though had different ideas. He played some sublime strokes in his innings of 25 including a massive six while Peter Sen was steady at the other end. When John left (somehow managing to nick a ball that was so wide that others would have needed two bat lengths to get there!), it got even better. Peter opened up and hit some crunching boundaries followed by our ever reliable numbers 10 and 11 who smashed the ball to all parts. We got to 231 in 47 overs with Udayan again making a case for batting above 10!

We were confident of a win during the break and we started well with Peter Sen and Ameetabh picking up 4 wickets between them. With Udayan bowling like an Indian Shane Warne (ok... Amit Mishra maybe..) and picking up 3 more, we even had the cheek to get Bala do a Dhoni and come on to bowl. Unlike Dhoni, he did pick up a wicket in his first over and the opposition were looking for places to hide!

An easy victory in the end - they were bowled out for 126 in 31 overs. The win sees us go up to 7th in the table with a great chance to go up a couple more places with another win or two.
 

 
06/08/11 - Battersea Ironsides CC 3rd XI vs OPCC 3rd XI  - Won

Lost the toss once again and put into bat on what looked like a pretty dodgy wicket. Within an over, we realised that the pitch was going to play as bad as it looked - lots of uneven bounce, huge turn and two-paced! The fact that BICC had a short leg in for the first 25 overs suggested that they knew how to play on this track!!
 
OPCC's start wasn't the best, something that we have been getting used to over the last few games. Pradeep N got one that bounced nastily off a good length while Christian and Bala got out to innocuous in-swingers. Ameetabh then played early on a ball that stopped on him and before we knew it, we were 30 for 4 and once again hoping for a miracle from our tail (oh... but Johnny S was playing for the 1s... so wasn't going to happen... or was it...). The Skipper and Pradeep M then played sensibly and got the score board to 80-odd for 4, and just when things were looking up the Skipper chased a very wide ball and nicked to the keeper for a well made 25. After he left and Michael got bowled around his legs to a ball that spun a mile, it was definitely looking like an early trip to the pub.
 
Around this time, Pradeep M had started to find his touch and was desperately encouraging (begging, cajoling...) whoever was batting with him to stay with him and take us to 180 at least. Ollie hung around seeing out 4 overs from the left arm spinner while Pradeep started opening up at the other end. Ollie went with the score around 120 and Harsimran got castled first ball. This brought the best No.10 in the league into bat - Udayan once again showed why the Skipper refuses to promote him from his lucky No. 10 position. He had the opposition baffled with some amazing drives over cover and mid-off caressing his way to 24. Pradeep meanwhile motored on through to the 80s with some audacious strokes - every stroke in the book apart from the reverse sweep and switch hit was played!! There were a couple of tense minutes when Suresh entered at 190 for 9 with Pradeep still in the 90s but the ease with which Pradeep was finding the boundary meant only one thing... the best 100 for the 3rd XI (ok.. at least in the last few years!). We finished on 200 in 43.5 overs, which was definitely more than what we thought was defendable at the start and most definitely more than what we thought we would end up at from 30 for 4!!
 
Tea was had picnic style at cow corner (changing facilities were under construction) and the chat was around how we needed to wrap this up through a disciplined performance with the ball. We had a great start with Ameetabh and Suresh picking up one each but then a partnership slowly started building for the third wicket. It was at this time that Ameetabh and Bala chased down a flick to square leg... Bala in a moment of tactical genius allowed Ameetabh to pick up the ball and throw it back ... boom - direct hit from the boundary and their best batsman gone! There was a procession to the pavilion after that as Suresh and Pradeep gave nothing away and we held every catch our way (except for the one that went through the fingers of the Skipper after he had jumped as high as Michael Jordan....).
 
Comprehensive win against a team that was just a place below us when the day started. We are now up to 5th in the table and play the team placed 4th next week. Looking at the fixture list, a great opportunity to move to 3rd if we win on the 13th!!

13/08/11 - OPCC 3rd XI vs Chipstead Coulsdon and Walcoutians CC  - Lost

Won the toss and chose to bowl as we had a team packed with bowlers. Turned out be an excellent decision as Chipstead hardly got the ball off the square for the first 20 odd overs. Tight bowling meant they were at about 19 for 2 at the end of 20 overs. To their credit, they never panicked and played sensibly and got to a decent score thanks to several extras in the second half of the innings. Wickets were shared around and we were very confident of chasing down 175 at the break.
 
Sure enough, we got off to a great start with Pradeep and Christian finding the boundary regularly and the hundred was up in 19 overs with only one wicket down. Then came some mindless batting - the skipper holed out to mid-off trying to loft one and after that every batsman tried one shot too many. Christian fell for an excellent 57 but no one else put their head down. With 50 runs required from 20 overs and 6 wickets in hand - we should have coasted home - instead we were bundled out for 146 in 30 overs. A performance to forget but still a chance to finish in the top 5 with wins in the last 3 games.

20/08/11 - OPCC 3rd XI vs Shepperton CC 3rd XI  - Winning Draw

With only 7 OP players on the field and 2 more on their way, Shepperton skipper was kind enough to let us bat first. Openers Laurie and Pradeep N made a positive start and we were at 34-0 at the end of 7 overs when the skies opened up. At 3.45pm, after watching the rain for nearly 2 hours, the captains shook hands and decided to call it off. Luckily before we could pack up and leave the rain stopped and sun came out..all within a matter of 10 mins! Shepperton's plastic cover on the pitch and some intense super sopping with bar towels meant that we could have a 61 over game.

Pradeep N started from were he left before the rain break, plundering boundaries at will. When Laurie and Bala fell in quick succession, Pradeep M (who scored a century in the last game he played for us) joined his namesake and kept the scorers on their toes. The pair put together 105 runs in less than 80 balls with their bowlers and fielders looking clueless. Just when it looked like both Pradeeps were heading towards a century each, a poor piece of running between the wickets by N cost M his wicket. N went on to complete his century and we declared at 198 in 28 overs with N remaining unbeaten at 102.

Despite having only 9 players, we knew that Shepperton, who are at the bottom of the league, were unlikely to chase this score down. Amit got us two early wickets in his incisive opening spell. As was expected, their No 3 and 4 then shut shop and played everything with a dead bat. Udayan bowled really well (9 overs for 13 runs) but was unlucky to not get a few wickets. Laurie was introduced into the attack right after drinks and with his patented magic ball - juicy full toss - he lured their set No 4 batsmen to hit straight down the throat of square leg. The same over Bala took a difficult catch at long-on to suddenly spark a life into the match. In the very next over, Pradeep M dismissed their No 3 but thereafter we had no luck with Shepperton's lower order playing out the remaining overs sensibly.

27/08/11 - Camberley CC 3rd XI vs OPCC 3rd XI  - Lost

03/09/11 - OPCC 3rd XI vs Weybridge Vandals CC 3rd XI  - Won