Southgate 2nd XI vs North London Muslims 2nd XI
25th July 2026 @ Hackney Marshes
In a murderous twist of Craig David: We had 8 men on Monday, got up to 9 on Tuesday, we had 10 players by Wednesday… And somehow it was up to 11 and back down to 10 over Friday night.
Fortunately, we arrived early to the scorched lands to watch Southgate Women taking on Stoke Newington Women, also on the marshes. Players surrounding the green squares dotted amongst the brown.
Collo’s Sunday cricket web runs deep. He knew the husband of one of the Stoke Newington players happens to dabble. We opened diplomacy talks on his behalf, Collo secured him until 5pm. We also had Andy “Dr. Nick” Nicholl on debut, further bolstering the top lip facial hair strength of the squad.
A questionable WhatsApp from one Southgate opening bowler in the early hours of the morning led skipper Faruqi to feel he would be better running that off up the hill straight away.
Some good tight opening bowling from Bint, whose spoken word Coldplay lyrics serenaded the Serengeti. Holmes tried a different approach with 7 wides followed by 6 dots. Then the wicket floodgates opened.
Bint & Holmes combined for 2 strangles (impressively on both the Mulla brothers), 2 bowled, and one firey snick to reduce them to 46/5 off 11.2 (wickets split 3:2 in favour of Bint). At this point the hangover was definitely peaking for the latter and Faruqi made his first change.
Southgate 2s charity knows no bounds when it comes to dropping catches. Over the next 25+ overs we dropped a catch at least every 5 overs. This kindly allowed 6 and 7 to add 99 runs of the eventual total 181 scored.
Cox eventually started the wickets tumbling again and went on to secure 3-43 off 15.1. Debutant Latchmore on our pioneering creche-release program, secured the biggest wicket (1-12 off 4) and another for Bint (4-32 off 12).
At the halfway stage chasing 182, on a pitch that had more than a spot or two that could’ve complicated matters, we needed a solid start. And yes, Mus came and went playing the way he does - on another day he breaks the back of the fielding team. But hour-of-the-game recruit Max Latchmore did the old-school graft alongside Liam Collett.
Meanwhile, our maestro meditated his way through the gears after clipping a serene boundary to get moving. At the peak of his powers he remains.
He had a few partners down the list but the 73 added with Coxy was the decisive stand for the fifth wicket, broken only in the final stages when trying to engineer the Australian to fifth league ton.
Colly was caught behind for 94 in that endeavour, but it mattered little. What a player. It’s through him that our promotion hopes remain more than alive with six weeks to go.
Southgate by three wickets.