Mighty 4s Take Down South Hampstead

On a sunny summer’s afternoon, the team travelled to the Birkbeck College Ground, a place which conjured up so many memories for the Mighty 4s, such as the infamous Verity-Nicoll “Richard’s” drop catch incident, the Ali Khan match fee debacle, the 2011 Promotion celebrations, Pistol’s 50 ball 98 and the mysterious “Robbie Kent in the Trees” incident which led to Bootsy missing a sitter, to name a few.

In the centre with the captain, the toss was correctly called and South Hampstead were immediately put into bat. And as expected, their free flowing batting began on cue, before Pistol has their opener plumb LB for 10. This was soon followed by a great bat-pad catch by Chrissy before Alex (1/35 from 7) bowled the other opener. While Pistol kept it tight at one end, chipping away with regular wickets, the young fire-brand Percy Verity (2/52 from 6) bowled with pace but not much luck, as the 4s attacking fields left him without much protection for a number of french cuts and nicks through 4th slip. After an opening spell of 16 overs, Pistol (5/33) was replaced by Gaurav (2/17 of 2.1), who did what regularly does, and cleaned up the tail, leaving South Hampstead with 149 from 36.1 overs.

After steering the side to a century opening partnership the previous week, the NEW Dream Team of Percy and Gaurav again made it look easy in the chase for the required 150. Not unlike the previous Dream Team, Gaurav plundered the bowling, while Verity, Percy rather than Richard, played with patience and style, and took the score to 75, before Guarav advanced to the spinner and was stumped for 44 off 49 balls. This brought Verity, the elder, to the crease, and immediately one could see where Percy got his technique from, as Richard punched two lovely strikes through the covers. And as the score approach one hundred, it looked like the Veritys might bring it home for the 4s, but a nicely shaped in-swinging yorker took out Richard’s off stump, falling for 8 from 11 balls. This was the last piece of joy for the home team though, as Chrissy entered and began monstering the bowling, finishing the game off in the blink of an eye with 44 not out from only 24 balls (including 26 off one over (46.466) after a taunt by the oppo keeper to try to finish it one over). Percy, for the second week in a row, was there at the end with another mature innings of 42* from 67 balls, showing the all round skills of this North Midd Legend in the making.

In the end it was a comfortable victory, taking us to 90 points on the league table. A draw between the top two teams, Hornsey and Acton and a win by Finchley, meant that the top four teams were all within four points, with Hornsey to play Finchley and us to play Acton next week. Big games. Go the Midd!