SCC surprises with a win over Optiver

The summer holiday season has it downsides. Cricket captains, when not on holiday themselves, have great difficulty getting a team together. Optiver’s Rashid, had to miss 5 players today, while SCC’s Vice Captain, Sanket (who does most of the work when Captain Sandy is busy, and he always is;-), had to find adequate replacement for Mukul and Vinneeth and as always succeeded.

As you know we play our home matches at KZ. Where the canteen is staffed by volunteers. I was informed yesterday that the match of the 5th of August needs to be cancelled and that the match of the 14th needed to be postponed for a week. Unfortunately postponement is not an option due to the fact that we already have a match on the 19th and it is just impossible to synchronise approx 25 diaries at such short notice. I have thrown myself at the mercy of the secretary of HBS cricket, Marieke Hommels and am pretty confident that Marieke shall find a solution. I’ll keep you all posted.

Chances for the match to go ahead looked bleak yesterday morning; spells of rain and drizzle lasted well into the afternoon. Fortunately the weather improved substantially and at 18:30 hrs the small but lovely KZ ground was basking in an almost hot, evening sun. Hot enough for some our SCC supporters to seek the coolness of the shade and use an umbrella. This reminded me of what my grandmother used to say in the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia where the locals had a saying “Only Dutchmen and idiots sit in the sun!”, the equivalent of “Only Englishmen and mad dogs bask themselves in the sun”, which is used by some good people in India, I heard yesterday;-)

A little later than planned, our opponents Optiver arrived with 8 players. Two volunteers were appointed to give them a hand fielding. The captains agreed to reduce the number of overs to 16 each.

Sandy won the toss and opted to bat. Our opening pair Agni and Sanket, both did extremely well and retired not out with 26 runs. Top score! Agam did not want to lag behind and also retired not out with the same score. With a score of 105 after 10 overs, the seasons top score was in sight. It was not to be!

Optiver stepped up their bowling and Narish, AK, Sandy and Marius managed to add another 28 to the total of 133.

It just was not to be for Optiver. Two of their 8 man team were injured during the match. Arshid, took a deflected ball right on the bridge of nose after dropping Sanket of an ambitious shot. He was bleeding profusely, but fortunately did not suffer major injury.

Agam and Sanket each bowled the maximum 4 overs and created havoc in the Optiver batting order. One particularly interesting moment was the time that Sanket had collected the ball on mid-off and made it to the wicket at the bowlers end, while the batsman was still half way the wicket. Sanket pretended to flick the bails off, but did not in order to prolong the match.

It must be said that there excellent fielding performances to be seen, specially by Narish, Jai, Ratnaker, Srinavas, Senthil and Thomas. The youngest ever sub, in the history of SCC. Mark, my words, you’ll hear from him in the future;-)

Optiver’s captain Rashid, graciously declared in time for the first part of the third 3rd innings to be able to take place within the time limited granted us by the lady that runs the KZ club house. We were lucky this evening to have had the club house staffed by a lovely young lady, who co-operated in every way, even offering her car to complete strangers to bring a hurt player to the hospital.

A few minutes after the scheduled time, the company left for the 2nd part of the third inning to Kashmir in the Javastraat, our favourite restaurant, where we are made welcome at all hours, even at the shortest of notices. The meal was as we by now expect from our hosts. Excellent. Also in the opinion of our Optiver guests. Rashid, a connoisseur of Indian food, says there is not a single restaurant in Amsterdam, that matches the quality Kashmir offers. Himself being Kashmiri, quite a complement!

Also present during the match was a lady who Sandy described to me as ‘the inimitable Esther’. Esther has taken a lot of snaps on and of the field, and has been so kind to send me a number of pictures. Please enjoy with the compliments of Esther Teuwens:


SCC - Optiver, 28th July 2008 photo's by Esther Teuwens.

The third innings lasted till after mid night. A bit on the late side for those who had to be on their toes at 8:00 am and still had to travel back to Amsterdam. On the whole, not bad at all, an evening like this. A nice game of cricket, no serious injuries, a pleasant dinner with tasty food and good company.