First win for Anza Champs

ANZA Champs registers their 1st win of the season

Scorecard

Gentlemen

It is always a matter of no insignificant note when the extraordinary becomes the ordinary.
At 1-1, we now have a non-losing record for the 2007 season, the only team in the ANZA franchise that can boast of this fact – and boast me must for who knows if we may ever see the like of this again.
In fact, we are now only the second team in the Club to produce a victory this season.
And to do so without many of our regular and well performed players, yells volume for the team work displayed.
Everybody contributed to the victory against Fusion and if we had fielded just a little better, we would have had even more trouble explaining to our families and partners just why we were home so early.
Let’s start at the very beginning, for that’s a very good place to start. First ball by the trimmer Feroze for the season and … first wicket to the trimmer Feroze for the season. Was this a start or was it the ending being written?
The answer came sooner than the 2006 vintage CHAMPS would have ever contemplated. Up stepped, President Dick and back to the delightful Turf City Pavillion stepped the Fusion number 2 at the end of the over, stumps in a mess behind him.
Ah, but this was just the appetizer for Tricky Dicky. First ball of his next over and he does a Feroze and gets the ball to whisper “air hit me”. It did, he did and Andy Espagnol swallowed it like fresh tapas.
When the slow moving terrified number 5 batter arrived, he took guard. Just why, we will never really know. Surrounded by 10 chirpy CHAMPS, he must have known what to expect. Dick bowls. Dicks hits seam. Seam hits leg which was leaning against the stumps. Hatrick! Joy, oh joy. When one considers how difficult it was for us to take 3 wickets in an innings last year, to get 3 wickets in 3 balls was well … Presidential. Well done John.
From there we reverted to form as we proceeded from 4-14 to 4-74. We seemed English in the field.
That changed quickly when Munib got one to jump and Bend-me Yeoh leaped sideways to pluck a beauty from its way to the boundary. Nice.
From there wickets fell with regularity as Win-good Goodwin, Baron Giacomo and Spainy kept things tight and stopped them getting away. Small point Andrew but when you give batsmen the send off, patting them on the back as you do it probably gives them mixed messages.
The keeper strolled in at the speed of slug and proceeded to bat that way. The last 2 wickets added 33 runs in five overs before the innings finished on a fine piece of fielding by the Baron who managed to run the Fusion player out from gully with a direct hit albeit after 3 bounces. Poetry.
Innings break and still work to be done before the rains came. Skip and Feroze were out there for 20 minutes facing up but the lack of a team to bowl against us meant that scoring was a trifle difficult till the umpires brought them on to the field to begin the second half.
An ok start of 27 before Skip was run out trying to beat a 50 year old’s throw from deep third man. Skip lost - for the 4th time in a row.
Feroze bullied his way to 25 before hitting a whisper-to-me full toss outside leg and straight to the other 50 year old Fusioner.
Will got triggered out by the novice in black. Darn tough to receive an LBW at the same place you normally have a mid pitch conference with your batting partner. Dave Goodwin also got shot out at sub-sonic speed so we were getting a bit worried about this gunslinger.
However, the apparent best finisher in the Club was still there. Andrew Clinton Perrin (you know who he is) Spain played a terrific innings of 38 and under no small pressure as a couple of wickets fell and the rain and darkness gathered. A quick victory was needed or we would be inequitably sharing points.
When Spainy left at 5-113, there was still much work to be done for we are the CHAMPS and we have well earned our reputation for structuring perfect blueprints for taking defeat from victory. Misplaced fear in the end really for up stepped Footrot (a dungo tuk mah bubby) Chamberlin and Munib Madni who together batted for us with such surety that we strolled across the line with more than 5 overs and 1 day of rain to spare.
A great way to spend an afternoon out of the house.
Special thanks to Sarah for coming down to score for us. Very much appreciated by us all.
This brings us to our next game on the 6th May against Proctor & Gamble. I’ve sent out the SWEBBS invite already so make yourself available if you can (Mal?)
Also be aware that our game against Golden on the 27th May is likely to now be pushed back to the 31st May (the public holiday).
For you fellows still to register, hop to it. For almost everyone, pay your fees otherwise I’m going to be Kiwi slapped around

Tally ho boys.
Geoff