Sam Brand vs Reading

There are rare days in a cricketer’s life where you wake up, drive down to the ground, the traffic signals are all green everywhere and you just know today is going to be fun. This experience never happens to a Mandarin but today was an exception.

A 10-men Mandarin team were due to play a 35 over match at Reading School and as tradition would have it, the traffic was delaying a famous Mandarin from arriving on time. Andy Heard volunteered to captain and smartly arranged for us to bat first on what looked like an under prepared pitch.

David Williams and Arun Sajjan opened to face a barrage of darts from A Herath. From the other end, A Vernone took up the challenge of landing his left arm leg spin on the pitch – he struggled to do that most of the time but did manage to get David stumped of a wide that was so far outside off that it threatened to land on the adjacent strip. The player of the match Sam Brand walked in at 3 took some time to get the measure of those darts and loopy drops and then turned on his T20 avatar. He produced a fine knock of 79 playing some superb shots all around the ground. Him and Arun constructed an 83 run partnership before Arun was stumped for 36. Chris Baker was in next, hit a nice boundary and was out bowled for 5. Jonathan Wilmot scored a breezy 31 and Chris McKeon was unbeaten at 13. The ever reliable Johnny Extras produced a fine 48 on the day and was the second top scorer as we finished with 217 for 5.

After some tea and biscuits we took the field again. Rob Eastaway started proceedings and was right on the money from ball 1. He bowled a superb 7 over spell for 24 runs but was unlucky to not take any wickets. Your correspondent, who shared the new ball with him was lucky and took the first of his 4 scalps caught and bowled low to his right. The second wicket fell quicky thereafter with David Williams taking a low catch at short midwicket. Reading skipper Andy Eagle and A. Herath then struck a 101 run partnership with the latter doing the most damage. Herath scored 64 of 55 balls and peppered the cow corner boundary with continuous boundaries. He was ultimately caught in the deep by Chris Baker off my bowling and with it ending most of the opposition’s hopes of chasing down a stiff total. Reading skipper soon fell after as the pressure of the scoreboard got to him – he was caught by Arun at cover of my bowling. Jonathan Porter, Andy Heard and Arun Sajjan all bowled tidy spells. A final flurry from Reading was ongoing but Andy brought in Sam as our 6th bowler and he finished his day with 3 for 27 producing a wicket in each of his 3 overs – his first wicket was a caught and bowled, second was a plumb LBW and the third was a quick stumping. Reading finished with 192 for 7 in their allotted 35 overs.

Sam took the wind of Reading’s sails with his stand out performances with both the bat and ball. He also surged past 1000 career runs for us!

Mandarins beat Reading University Staff by 25 runs.

Rakesh Ramani