Abracadabra

The Merstham Magics were the opposition for the Llamas opening game of the Men’s Surrey Slam 2022 season at Park Lane on Tuesday. Both teams included players from the fixture between the Clubs last Sunday when the Cavs lost by a 1 run against Merstham’s Sunday X1.
The Llamas won the toss and put the Magics into bat and only a couple of early wides took a bit of the gloss off Ned Littlemore’s spell (3-0-14-1) which was rewarded in the 5th over when Captain Callum Gurbutt took a catch to dismiss opener Ali Pervaiz (13) to have Merstham 34-1.
Straight hitting from fellow opener Naveed Saeed and less straight hitting from Ben Carter took Merstham onto 75 when Manoj Rajarethinam came onto bowl in the 12th over and had Ben Carter (20) loop one into the air for Michael Ramsden to take a catch in front of the stumps for 75-2.
In the 13th over Callum Gurbutt got his reward for an accurate spell of 4 overs when Naveed Saeed (27) played on and was bowled to keep the Magics score in check at 76-3.
Manoj got the next wicket when Michael Ramsden took a nick behind to dismiss Jawad Riaz (15) for 93-4. Manoj wasn’t finished and in his next over got his 3rd wicket (4-0-19-3) getting Laurie Nicholson (8) lbw with Merstham now 111-5 in the 18th over. A tidy last over from Shayne Cossey went for just 4 runs as Merstham finished their 20 overs on 124-5
Srikanth Vuppala and Michael Ramsden opened the Llama reply and Srikanth got the Llamas off to a flying start with 3 fours in the 1st 2 overs before being bowled by Charan Sai Reddy Chintakunta (3-0-12-1) in the 4th over for 13 (from 8) attempting to add to his boundary count and the Llamas were 29-1.
Tom Harris and Michael Ramsden were pegged back as overs 5-10 went for just 22 runs with Merstham Captain Alex Reeves and youngster Hamish Walker restricting the Llamas progress and in the last ball of the 10th over Alex Reeves (4-0-14-1) bowled Rambo (7) to see the Llamas at 54-2 at the halfway stage and still needing another 71 from the remaining 10 overs.
This became 64-3 in the 12th over when Arthur Thilo (1) was run out, although Tom Harris graciously admitted it was probably him that should have fallen on his sword. This brought Joel Miller to the wicket and Joel set about trying to repeat his 33 runs from the Cavs weekend fixture by hitting 3 fours in the 13th over to begin to catch up with the required run rate and a further 8 from over 14 and 10 from over 15 saw the Llamas back on target at 95-3 needing 30 more at a run a ball from the last 5 overs.
What looked achievable started to become undone as the (lack of) light began to play a part as Merstham produced their Magic trick of “Now you see it and now you don’t”.
Tom Harris (21) was out lbw to Liton Tarofdar in the 17th over for 108-4 and Manoj was also lbw for 115-5 from the last ball of the 18th over. It was Liton bowling the 19th over who pulled the rabbit out the hat getting 2 more wickets (4-0-28-3) bowling Brijesh Patel (0) and with a wide in-between, bowling Shayne Cossey (0) and the Llamas were 116-6 then 118-7.
Last over needing 7 to win Captain Callum Gurbutt joined Joel Miller (34 not out from 28 balls) but just 4 runs from the last over left the Llamas 3 runs short of their target.