Match report by Dick Belcher

At the start of play the 3rd team were sitting on 185 points one place above Headley Old Grammarians on 179 points who were in the last relegation spot. We needed to win or at least match the result of the Headley Old Grammarians who were playing away at 3rd place Ashtead.

Captain Steve Cross won the toss and elected to field and (details from Play Cricket as I only arrived in time to see the Llama reply) with his abundance of bowlers managed to dismiss Addiscombe for 130 in 42.5 overs with the wickets shared between Callum Gurbutt (2-11), Roy Chaudhury (3-18), Aadil Raza (2-26), Steve Cross (2-17) and Nick Rotsey (1-17).

Obid Khan was wicketless today but should be pleased with his season’s tally of 18 league wickets for the 3rd team, second only to Callum Gurbutt’s 26 3rd team league wickets.

This season the bowling hasn’t been a problem with many options available to Captain Steve Cross; however the same can’t be said of the batting where apart from the 1st 2 league games of the season, we haven’t passed 200. So with a target of 131 to win the Llamas were hopeful of chasing the target and keeping our league placing in our own hands.

Kamran Mirza (one of only 2 3rd team Llamas to reach 250 League runs) was out for 3 when he was yorked by R Bowen and 14-1 was soon 20-2 as in the 8th over Aadil Raza also fell to the yorker delivered by the same bowler R Bowen.

Chris Scott put some momentum into the innings with 26 from 38 balls when in the 19th over Chris was caught at mid off and the Llamas were 53-3. Ross Gurbutt joined 14 year old Rounak Ghosh who was displaying a wide range of strokes. The pair pushed onto 84 when in the 28th over Rounak (28) was caught at mid off; a shot that would surely have cleared mid off once Rounak grows and gets the power to go with his obvious ability.

10 overs later in the 38th over Ross Gurbutt (by the way the other 3rd teamer to have exceeded 250 league runs with his 348 placing him 6th in the league list giving some kind of symmetry with brother Callum who was 6th in the league bowling list with his tally of 26 league wickets) was the 5th wicket to fall when he’d reached 26 and became the 3rd victim of R Bowen (9-0-33-3/all bowled).

At 114-5 and with 7 overs left to get the remaining 17 runs Nick Rotsey joined 17 year old James McCarthy-Hall but lost James almost immediately as James (13) was bowled and the Llamas were 116-6.

No further hiccups as Nick Rotsey (12 no) & Captain Steve Cross (5 no) saw the Llamas safely to their target of 131 after 41.5 overs to win by 4 wickets and claim the 20 points to finish the season up in mid table 5th and 2 points above today’s opposition Addiscombe. Headley Old Grammarians lost their game at Ashtead so today’s win didn’t turn out to be crucial.

As well as the 3rd team finishing in 5th place the 2nd and 5th teams also finished in 5th place in their respective divisions with rather suggests an average season for those teams.