Stoke Newington Women 335 (150/3)
Southgate Women 277 (127/10)
16 over pairs match, scoring starts at 200
I aim to keep these match reports as positive as possible, but first it needs to be said that players arriving to matches and training sessions late has become a regular habit, and it needs to be kicked. We weren’t able to have a proper warm up for this match and a good warm up is always essential, but particularly so on Saturday morning as we hadn’t played a match for about a month. It was therefore no surprise that we started slowly.
Stoke Newington won the toss and chose to bat. They got off to a fast start, scoring 10 or more in each of their first 3 overs, but were pegged back by a wicket from Megan Gibbs (bowled) and a tight 4 run over from Nat Prout. Stokey’s second pair added a further 33 runs without losing a wicket, despite good overs from Shikhaa Gupta and Yolanda Mackie.
Southgate grew into the innings during the third pair with Pooja Patel inducing a catch behind to Piumi Bandara and a tight over from Megan Gibbs producing a runout. However, Stokey’s final pair – a mother and daughter combo – finished very strongly, adding a further 48 runs without loss. Good batting combined with some fielding below what we’re capable of – feet being used instead of hands was far too common an occurrence – meant Stoke Newington wracked up an imposing total of 150/3, meaning we required 136 to win.
Pooja and Nat got our innings off to a steady start with the former rotating strike effectively and Nat finding the boundary twice. A run out off their final ball put a dampener on an otherwise good partnership. Piumi and Shikhaa’s partnership was marred by a disastrous over that contained 3 run outs, but Piumi rallied well to hit 2 boundaries and 2 singles in their final over.
Megan and Laura Klasupa combined well to add 32 runs as a pair, including five 4s, however Stokey’s captain bowled well and picked up 2 caught behind wickets in the two overs she bowled at this pair. Yolanda and Mareeni Raymond batted together as our final pair and the game felt well beyond us. However, when Yo struck 5 consecutive boundaries, to all points of the ground, before taking a single on the 6th ball to maintain strike, anything seemed possible! That ridiculous feat was always unlikely to be replicated and while Mareeni did strike three 4s in as many balls, a couple of wickets meant we fell well short of the required target.
Our 9 match winning streak was always going to come to an end at some point, and having it end in a friendly against a more established team (who are also really nice!) is not a disaster, but I do feel as though we should’ve been more competitive; it took us too long to get into the match.
Max Joseph