The importance of the two days in Coventry for the DCB was to get the players to experience cricket on grass again. Division 2 will be played on grass pitches and it is not easy to adjust at once from the artificial pitches used in Germany to the grass ones on which the tournament games will be played.
In the 40 over game Germany won the toss and chose to bat first. Milan Fernando and captain James Egglestone opened the batting on a sunny, but windy afternoon. The openers pushed the score along quite quickly, paticularly Fernando, but in the 6th over both Egglestone, caught behind and number three batsman, Andre Leslie, lbw, fell, leaving Germany on 33 for 2 wickets. Three overs later Fernando was out, caught behind, and Germany were 51 for 3. In the 10th over Satya was caught at mid-on and in the next over Asif Khan went, too, caught in the gully. At this stage of the game the German team on 63 for 5 wickets was in trouble and needed a period of consolidation to set the ship on an even keel again. A big innings (or two) was needed.
The consolidation came with the batting of Rishi Pillai and Farooq Ahmed who between them took the score to 205, a stand of 142. Farooq was first out, bowled, with his score on 86 in the 32 over and Rishi soon followed him back to the pavilion, caught behind, two overs later with his score on 52. This was a good batting perfornamnce from these two middle-order batsman and particularly since this was the first occasion on which they had partnered each other.
Building on the 215 score, the last four batsmen, Javed Iqbal, Shakeel Hassan, Kashif Haider and Eshan Latif put on another 51 runs before the innings closed on 266 all out.
This total turned out to be enough for victory. The Coventry and District team, needing to score at 6.7 an over for victory, found runs hard to come by against the bowling of Javed Iqbal and Eshan Latif. The first wicket went down to Eshan in the 6th over with the score on 19 and when the captain turned from his fast bowlers to his spinners, Kashif Haider with his leg spin was also mean in giving away runs and took the next wicket, a stumping by Satya. The score was only 47 runs by the 15th over. Spin largely dominated from then on and first Tarun Rawat, with a cleverly flighted ball secured a stumping and then Farooq Ahmed bowled out the next batsman, who offerred no shot to the ball which took his wicket - 90 for 4. Shakeel Hassan, the off-spinner also bowled tightly, and at the half-way stage of the innings, Coventry had made 73 runs – way behind the required run-rate. At the 30 over stage,with the score on 109 the run rate was 3.6, far short of what was required.
With 10 overs to go the Coventry team did up the pace and Waquar with some strong hitting reached his century. However, following the fall of another 2 wickets, by Tarun (a stumping) and Shafraz (a catch in the deep by Egglestone) the Coventry innings came to a close with 6 wickets down in the 40th and final over. This gave Germany a win by 50 runs.
It is always good to win, but the work out on grass was the crucial thing for the German team. All the German squad played a part in the two days of activities in Coventry and team spirit is high on the eve of the crucial openening match in the European 2nd Division game, against France on 13 July.
The DCB's thanks go out to the Covenrtry and District League members for making their excellent facilities available to their German visitors and for their very generous hospitality over the two days. The Coventry and District Development team came out to Hamburg in 2009 and the DCB hopes to see them back in Germany again in 2011.
The good wishes of the Coventry officials and players for the upcoming tournament in Guernsey are also much appreciated as are, on the domestic front, the warm messages of support which have reached the DCB squad from the cricketers in Germany– Coach, Keith Thompson and Manager, Ben Das and all the playing squad are determined to give their utmost in the challege which lies ahead in the next week.
The matches can be followed on the ECC website and regular reports and photos will be put onto the DCB website www.cricket.de
Brian Fell
DCB-Kader in Coventry
