A successful Wisden City Cup tournament culminated in an impressive victory for a representative eleven against the cream of the Middlesex Academy, Chris Peploe excelling with both bat and ball. On a pleasing September’s day which could have passed for midsummer the WCC captain Steve Selwood won the toss and elected to field. Neneto Davies and Afridi both relished the challenge of opening the bowling, impressing with quick and accurate spells of 1-13 and 1-21 respectively. Afridi bowled opener John Simpson for 5, while Davies snared the wicket of county batsman Daniel Housego for 9 thanks to a gully catch from star fielder Choudhry. At 32-2 from 5 overs the Academy needed to bed in before suffering any further scares, and the third wicket pair of Adam Rossington and Josh Davey managed to do so creditably. Rossington in particular belied his callow 16 years with a bold and decisive selection of front foot drives which pushed the innings along at a secure rate of around seven an over, Davey content to play the supporting role.
Selwood turned to Haffeji’s pace, Cawood’s left arm stranglers and Shaftab Khalid’s offbreaks to find the third wicket, but had to wait until the 13th over for the introduction of Peploe to bring a double breakthrough. On the fourth ball of Peploe’s first over Rossington, having reached a debonair 40, made one venture down the wicket too many and found himself stumped by Milo Wilkin. Within a couple of balls Kabir Toor holed out to Davies and the game was fractionally in the WCC’s favour at 73-4.
Yet the arrival of the tall Ajay Sangha soon redressed the balance, as he combined power and timing on his way to an unbeaten 31, including a couple of towering sixes. Davey briefly increased his tempo as well before departing for 20 with a simple return catch for Peploe, who ended with 3-22 from his four overs. The WCC side didn’t take any further wickets, and Southgate cobbled together 12 runs in an unbroken 28 stand for the sixth wicket. 21 runs came from the last two overs, slightly blemishing what was shaping up as a miserly fielding display as the Academy reached what many around the ground viewed as a par score.
Wilkin (18) and Selwood (12) began the response in brisk fashion, but were each bowled in consecutive overs by David Burton and Tom Hampton respectively. Sandhu’s introduction into the attack looked like taking the game away from an already teetering WCC side, with Chowdhury judged leg before without scoring and Khalid (1) bowled playing across the line in the following over. At 42-4 the game threatened to be drifting into an anticlimax, but Peploe again swung the game back to the WCC, this time decisively. Admittedly they were helped by the curious decision not to bowl Sandhu for a third over – he had briefly struggled to land it on the strip, with three consecutive wides, but a haul of 2-8 from two overs would usually oblige the captain to let the bowler finish his spell.
The Academy’s total still looked out of reach, and with RA Hussain batting securely but not striking boundaries it appeared as though too much rested on Peploe to hit the big runs. Yet WCC sensibly kept creeping along, realising they couldn’t win the game by the tenth over but they could lose it by that stage. It wasn’t until the 14th over that they started hitting out with aplomb – the Academy’s spinner Ravi Patel had already bowled a tidy pair of overs when Hussain, having limited himself to singles and twos for his first ten overs, startled him with a giant six into the sight screen. Peploe managed a similar feat off Patel’s next over, but the spinner did claim the wicket of Hussain, stumped by Rossington for 31.
So at exactly100-5 off 16 overs WCC needed 31 from four overs for a considerable upset. With Peploe timing the ball effortlessly half the job was done, they just needed one of the lower middle order batsmen to start middling his shots instantly. Yadav was unable to fulfil this role, caught Davey off Sangha for 1, but Afridi came in at number eight to hit a fearless couple of boundaries. The Academy turned to their beanpole opening quick Danny Evans to stem the runs, but when Peploe thrashed him for a four and a six in consecutive balls the match had reached its watershed. Afridi ended up on 11*, plundering the winning runs off Burton as the WCC side celebrated a victory where they’d looked quite the equals of their illustrious opposition. This was a victory which will gain the attention of a few other county cricket officials, who will be intrigued and encouraged to discover the amount of untapped talent in league cricket.