Wednesday of Cricket week saw the Llamas playing host to Steven Hirst’s CricX Eleven. Steven’s CricX Agency places overseas players looking for Clubs and assists Clubs looking for overseas players and Steven had invited players from far and wide to take on the Llamas.

CricX batted first and found the early inconsistent bounce difficult to deal with as with the 2nd ball of the match Caleb Whitefoord found the gloved wrist of Jordan Bunyan who was caught by keeper Morgan Barnes.

Fellow opening bowler Bertie Morgan’s 1st ball bowled Nichal Dega (Indian overseas at Mayfield CC in Sussex Div 2) with a ball that kept very low and the CricX were 1 run for 2 wickets.

A recovery of sorts until the 5th over when with the score on 21 CricX lost their 3rd wicket as Caleb clean bowled Sandeep Patel (New Zealander). South African Andile Mogakane (Overseas at Wargrave CC in the Home Counties Premier) was next to go as Caleb struck again with Tommy Bates taking the catch at mid off for 30-4 which soon became 32-5 as the same pair dismissed Jehy Anderson.

Lakshan Rodrigo was then dismissed by Tommy Bates and CricX were 60-6 in the 13th over.

Captain Mohammed Ashraful (ex Bangladeshi Test player with 61 test appearances scoring a century on his debt as a 17 year old) was joined by Indian Ashay Palkar and together they turned the game around as the pair put on a 100 run partnership and in the same over (32nd) Mohammed Ashraful completed his century.

The score moved onto 186 when in the 25th over Ashay Palkar (38) was caught by Caleb Whitefoord off Seth McDowall’s bowling. The captain was finally out having scored 115 when Seth McDowall (2-29) had him caught by Jordan Bunyan to see CricX 8th wicket go down with the score 196-8.

Having started the game batting for CricX, Jordan was now fielding for the Llamas and later was to field for CricX!!

Caleb Whitefoord claimed the last two wickets to fall as Sam Bell caught Madhana Nimesh (Sri Lankan overseas at Potterne CC in the West of England Premier; where incidentally Michael Burgess is also playing) and then Caleb caught and bowled Heshan Hettiabachchi (also at Potterne CC) to finish his bowling with excellent figures of 7.5-0-33-6 to see the CricX innings close at 203 after 38.5 of their allotted 40 overs; which was quite a recovery from 32-5.

The Llama reply started with Seth McDowall and Advaith Bali. Advaith was the 1st wicket to fall with the score on 11 when he was clean bowled by Ashay Palkar who followed his smooth run up with very fast bowling (4-0-17-1).

Tommy Bates joined Seth and the pair took the Llamas to 47 before trying to turn a 2 into a 3, Tommy (10) was run out and the 2nd wicket went down (47-2). Two runs later Sam Bell lost his off stump as he was bowled by South African Adile Mogakane in another example of accurate fast bowling (4-1-12-1) and the Llamas were 49-3.

Morgan Barnes was the 1st of 4 victims that went to Heshan Hettiabachchi as he went lbw for 12 for 71-4. Fraser Sheat (8) became Heshan’s next victim losing his off stump (83-5) and the same fate befell Richie Oliver (83-6) for Heshan’s 3rd wicket.

Wickets continued to tumble as opening bowling leg spinner (among many other mystery deliveries) K.C. Cariappa had Ben Jones and Caleb Whitefoord both lbw as the Llamas went from 84-7 to 84-8.

Fin Wilsher survived the hat-trick ball from KC Cariappa and Seth McDowall survived the hat-tick ball from Heshan Hettiabachchi but the survival was only short lived as opening bat Seth (43) was 9th out bowled to give Hershan his 4th wicket (4-0-13-4) and then KC Cariappa got his 3rd wicket (4.3-1-10-3) as the Llamas were all out for 91 having lost the last 6 wickets for just 8 runs.

Of the 10 wickets to fall 6 were clean bowled and 3 were lbw which was a testament to the accuracy of the bowling and in some cases the speed of the bowling where the bails weren’t just removed, they had to be recovered from nearer the boundary.

A good test for a relatively young Llama team and I suspect it’ll be a while before they meet as good a bowling attack as provided by Steve’s CricX team.