Irvine v Glasgow Accies (07/06/09) scorecard

Brilliant day for cricket yet the concerns of playing on an Irvine pitch is always a big concern in a batsmen's mind. Obviuosly being a bowler all I see are wickets !!…. Irvine won the toss and chose to bat .. Loosing the toss did work our way in the end though. Habib Zai struck in his first over taking an important wicket with a helmet crushing short ball and an easy lobbed up catch for Carrick. Although Zai was happy with the way he was bowling , complaints about poor fielding and catches being dropped were his constant banter. According to me the fielding was of descent standard and only two catches dropped in the whole game…

Anywhooo… Irvine were putting pressure on the fielders after the fall of a wicket and batting well under pressure. At one point Irvine seemed set to score a massive total but Vikas Puttaswamy and Abhay Andar maintained the middle session with disciplined bowling all through. Dried out for runs the batsmen started making mistakes and soon the tables were turned. The session after drinks saw a rapid fall in wickets and the run rate slipping … there was a heated argument between the Irvine skipper Stuart Mccullum and Accies bowler Duncan Kelso (After a brilliant run out effort by Afridi saw the fall of Mccullum's wicket). The umpires came to the rescue and put a stop to it. Irvine ended up with 205 for 8 and weren't happy with the scorecard..they were expecting to score about 300 odd according to some spectators !! ..

The teas were really nice and helped calm everyone down..

After teas , It was show time for the Accies batsmen.. Tanvir Singh and Himanshu Mishra put on a very steady openning partnership of 50 odd runs until a silly mix up between the two landed Tanvir (38) in the dressing room. Himansu didn't get put off by this mistake and pressed on to score a very steady 46. Hard hitting Habib Zai blasted an enormous 6 into the bushes .. but was out caught soon after.. Ken Autin played a gem of an innings scoring 50 in just 58 balls. This brought our run rate close to the target and by the half time mark we were 105 for the loss of two wickets .. Ken's 50 and Himansu's 46 got us upto 140 odd and the rest was left to the Habib Malik, Dougie Carrick and Afridi who saw us home comfortably.

The Joy of beating Irvine, at Irvine, has always been a priceless Accies moment and always will be …