And, all of a sudden we're back! After a seemingly endless winter, the league cricket season returned with a bang on Saturday. The lack of preseason preparation didn't seem to matter as we notched up four wins (albeit one by default) out of four.

Our 1s - with five players making their club debuts - played host to Old Isleworthians (promoted into the division last season) at Lincoln Road. With the sun beating down, we elected to field first. A series of starts by the opposition batsmen never seemed to materialise into anything solid and partnerships were broken at regular intervals. Jonah (1-43) and Abdullah (2-37) worked well together to keep things tight and grab wickets at important times. Jacko (1-40) and Zac (1-35) bowled better than their figures suggested, but it was the impact of, 15 year old, Tasin Iqbal (4-9) that grabbed the plaudits. Credit should also go to Tom Dallmeyer for his four catches. All in all, at tea, Old Isleworthians walked off 199 all out - a pretty much par score for the day.
In reply, we lost an early wicket but Davis Mills (77) batted excellently to steady the ship and put us in a great position to win the game. A mini-collapse in the middle order caused some nerves [108-3 became 152-7] but solid batting from Dan Naughton (32*) and Harry Wilkins (15*) saw us home.

The 2s faced the long journey to play the same opponents. We batted first on a tricky wicket and our openers - Del Allen and Ajay (32) - dug in and got through the difficult opening period. Jack Ryan (26) and Callum Wick (21) upped the scoring in the middle overs to move us towards a competitive total of 130.
With the ball, our opening bowlers - Abhishek (2-15) and Ali (4-21) - bowled superbly and ran through the top order, before Kariq (2-9) cleaned up the tail. They finished 62 all out.

Our 3s hosted Alexandra Park at the Grammar School. We won the toss and elected to field first and it seemed like a good decision as our bowlers took early wickets and then wickets at regular intervals to bowl AP out for 124. Jawad (4-31), Baxter (3-38) and Adnan (2-38) leading the way.
In reply, we started shakily and fell to 25-3 before an excellent 38 from Wasif helped steady the ship. When he fell, we were 104-6 and closing in on victory and our lower order did the rest, as we won by 3 wickets.

Now, I did say four wins from four and our 4s got the first win of the weekend, taking the 10 points on Friday afternoon after a concession from our opponents.

All in all an excellent start to the season, especially for our bowlers, who dominate our Team of the Week. We look forward to next week now:

1s away to Osterley
2s home to Southgate
3s away to Southgate
4s home to Mill Hill Village