Match Report:: 24 April 2006: Informatics (99-7) bt. Ex-Exec(98-7)
Informatics won the toss and decided to field. Bill has to sadly sit this one out since he had to catch a plane midway through the match. The bowling performance was a tale of two halves with the two of the Ex-Exec members scoring 25* before retiring. In the second half of their innings, their less experienced batsmen struggled to get the ball away and Graham took 3 wickets on debut. Our bowling was tight and managed to restrict them to 98. Our batting performance was filled with lots of good starts but no one managed to gain the upper hand. Shehzad compiled a good 10 and was looking good for more before he was caught out. We were lucky to get a generous amount of extras and Sethu with a quick-fire 21 at the death saw us through.
Match Report:: 01 May 2006:  Informatics (73-6) bt. EU Staff (72-6)
Not the strongest side that 'staff' have ever fielded against us, but I'm pretty sure that yesterday was our first ever victory over university staff!
'Staff' won the toss and elected to bat (mostly because several of their team had not appeared?), but an early wicket from Charles put them straight on the back foot. In an excellent spell, Shri then removed the other opener Bailey for 17 on his way to 2/7 from 4 overs. Despite us using seven bowlers, 'staff' struggled to 72-6 off their full 20 overs.
In reply we got off to a decent enough start before Mike ran himself out for 8 and Paul swished at a straight one to be bowled for 4. Shehzad stabilised things with 23, but Rab (1), Arnav (3) and Vinay (7) all got out without us making too much progress towards our modest target. But Charles, with a swift 18 not out put us back on track and Graham hit the winning runs to get us home with 3 1/2 overs and 4 wickets to spare.

A pretty good performance overall, especially in the field, but we could do with more people contributing with the bat! Nothing particularly new there I guess.
Here's to carrying on our good start to the year! Hopefully we can surprise a few teams!
Match Report:: 05 May 2006: Informatics (113-7) bt. Bellevue Chapel(112-8)
We made chasing 112 a little harder than it perhaps needed to be, but a solid contribution in the middle order from Shehzad, Bill and Vinay enabled Des to hit the winning runs from the penultimate ball. We bowled decently enough, if we did take too long to bowl our 20 overs, but there were still a few too many runs given away in the field. their total relied heavily on their three good bats, on of whom was well caught on the boundary, by Graham of a Toby full toss. Only having 9 men meant that their opener cam back in for the last couple of overs to push their total up.
Champagne moment was an attempted run out at the bowlers end, catching the umpire, in a tender place.
Mike, Sethu, Graham and Vivek also batted well in our reply, with perhaps a few too many well struck shots going straight at fielders and a too few singles being taken ??
Match Report:: 19 June 2006: Informatics (96-9) lost to Bellevue Chapel (97-6)
With a flurry of people dropping out at short notice, Bill had an interesting time trying to sort out an 11 to take the field. Thanks to Dharmesh, Arnav and Dane for stepping in at short notice!
Bill lost the toss and wasn't too disappointed to be put into bat, but things then proved far from easy. Bill and Mike started OK if a bit slowly against some decent bowling on a pith that was offering movement and variable buonce to the pacier bowlers. Mike top edged one to the keeper, to bring Shehzad to the wicket, but Bill promptly ran him out, calling for a sharp single to mid off (note to self - it's not a good idea for the captain to run out the star batsman for 1!). To make things worse, Bill and Arnav then got bogged down for a couple of overs, leaving Belvue well and truly on top! We did manage to pick things up a bit from there, partly due to a large number of wides, but partly also to boundaries from Bill, Dharmesh (who was unlucky to be run out with a direct hit) and Matt. Geoff, Dane and Shri also picked up some late runs and somewhere in there Charles Calloway scored his first ever run, but 96-9 was probably going to be 20 runs too few.

Our bowling effort got off to a good start, with Dharmesh taking 2 cheap wickets and Shi picking up the dangerous looking opener. It then got better when Matt Smith took 2 wickets in his first over and Shehzad also picked up a wicket, leaving them with 6 down for about 50. However from then on, they batted very well, putting the bad balls away nicely, and with a few catches not going to hand and a fair few bits of sloppy fielding, they got to the target without further alarm with 2 1/2 overs to spare.

A decent effort in the end and a close-ish game, but we neede to have made 20 or so more runs to make in interesting, and we missed Sethu's bowling on a pitch made for pacier bowlers.
Match Report:: 06 July 2006: Informatics (127) lost to  Flamingoes(128, 19.1 overs)
A game that started out in disappointing fashion, ended up a very close and enjoyable game. On winning the toss, Bill had little choice other than to bat, with only 8 players present at the ground. We couldn't have got off to much worse a start though with both openers going to first ball ducks from the first ball of each of the first 2 overs and a record low score looked as if it might be just around the corner. After Dave Duffy (guest) went for 1, it was left to Shehzad and Bill (with Dave as a runner) to rebuild the innings. Helped by some friendly bowling and a lot of wides both players batted pretty well to spare our blushes. After Shehzad retired, Tom came to the wicket and in his first ever game of cricket helped himself to 14 runs. Bill's innings came to an end on 24 when Gus called for a quickish single, only to see Dave (running for Bill) run out by a direct-ish hit. It was very odd to be standing at square leg watching as my wicket went without me taking any part in the action at all :-( At this point a group of around 15 youths turned up and started cheering the teams on (with more than a touch of Irony) from the boundary. Our worst fear that they were a bunch of neds set on disrupting the game didn't come true as they started enjoying some banter with the fielders and supporting with soccer chants from the boundary. Back to our innings and a couple of 6s from Gus (24) and runs from Adrian and Qamar, who got better and better the longer he batted, saw us to a total of 127, that seemed a mile away at 0-2 with 2 of our best batsmen out.

Our bowling effort didn't start much better than our batting, with the first 4 overs, from Tom and Andy (a loan flamingo) going for 42 runs, but we kept at it and some tidy bowling (mostly) from Qamar, Ali, Gus and Shehzad pulled us back into the game and left them needing 11 from the last 2 overs. Dave 'The cat' Duffy, roared on by the crowd, then managed to bowl a straight ball to account for their Swedish batsman (who never looked like hitting the ball anywhere) only to be then be smacked for a big boundary by the incoming batsman and then go for a further 3 runs before taking a 2nd wicket with his last ball, leaving 4 needed off the last over. Sadly the first ball of the last over was a juicy full toss, which was driven through Shehzad (a dodgy bounce?) for the winning boundary, followed by a pitch invasion. somewhere in there, Shehzad and Mike managed to go for the same catch in comedy stlye (a very high ball straight at Mike at short cover was intercepted by Shehzad, the bowler, with the inevitable collision and ball plopping harmlessly to the floor), and Bill very nearly managed to hang of to a keepers cat at the 2nd attempt, diving full length to grab a sharp chance that bounced of his arm, only to spill it as he hit the ground.

All in all a fun and close game! Thanks to Dave Duffy and Gus from Drummond Trinity for helping us out and thanks to what turned out to be the West of Scotland youth cricket squad for providing noisy support for 2/3 of the game. It was kind of surreal to have your name chanted out by the crowd during a game, but actually quite a lot of fun too!
Match Report:: 03 August 2006: Informatics (158-6) bt. Eccentric Flamingoes (110)
In what now must be by far Informatics cricket's most successful year, we finally managed to notch a win over Eccentric Flamingoes after a run of mostly close, but some not so close games over the years. Not only that, we did it in emphatic style, scoring our second highest total of the season 158 (for about 6) off our 20 overs.

Having spent much of the week scratching around for a team, we finally came up with a strong looking eleven thanks to Steve T (E=MCC), Amjad ('Staff) and Angus (DTs). Bill had little hesitation in batting first after winning the toss, and was proved right when Shehzad and bill got off to a flying start. As is usually the case Shehzad was retirred on 25* in less than a handful of overs. After a couple of early unproductive swishes, Steve T, joined the party and the score was fairly rattling along. Matt H continued the good work, with the score now in the 80s and Bill looking dead on his feet. When Bill finally retired, Matt F, making his season's debut never got going the way we all know he can and went tamely when aiming a big blow and top edging. Sethu continued the onslaught with some brutal hitting before being dismissed by the game (and possibly the season's) champagne moment, when he backed so far to leg to get the boundary that would take him past 25, that he cover drove the leg stump to short cover (cart wheeling in spectacular style) with the ball dribbling to gully. I've seen people tread on their wickets before and hit them on their back swing, but I've never seen anyone smash the stumps with a full blooded cut before on the forward part of the stroke! After that, Graham batted well (again) and Said scored his first ever runs (4 of them), but the innings ended in a clatter of wickets, with Angus and Amjad both getting first ballers to the last 2 balls of the innings.

158 was always going to be a daunting total and after a few lusty early blows, Flamingoes lost wickets too steadily to make a real challenge as we held on to all of our catches. In the gathering gloom, Matt F took the last wicket with a catch behind (bill) off the last over to leave them well short at 110 all out in the gathering gloom.

As I said, it has been our most successful season results wise, but also one of the best fun wise, this year's new intake have been really good to play along side!!

Unless someone takes on the job of organising next week's away fixture at the bush, that game looks unlikely to happen with Toby, Bill and Sethu all away or unavailable, which leaves us with only one scheduled fixture left this season :-( We may try to sort out one more end of season game if at all possible.
Match Report:: 17 August 2006: Informatics (104 all out) lost to Holy Cross(105-3(?))
We won the toss and batted, which is always dangerous against better opposition, after the to order folded pretty quickly (only Shehzad with an aggressive 10 and Mike, who at least hung around for a bit made much impression) it was looking foolhardy. From then on however things started to pick up. Charles C batted pretty well for his 5 and with a few extras and Sethu starting to play well the score picked up quite a bit. From then on it was the Sethu show. Carrying on from his 97 not out for Staff on Saturday, he proceeded to smash their bowling to all part of the ground for a very good 50, only perishing trying to run 2 to keep the strike of the penultimate ball. All Simon (borrowed from the opposition), Siddhu and Bill needed to do was giver him the strike and watch. John came in on the last ball and was run out going for a 2nd run following a slash through the slips. Still, 104 all out was a pretty decent score from 18 overs and a long way from what at one stage was looking like our lowest total of the season by some way.
Holy Cross always looked like getting it though, despite our borowee, Simon (who is HC 2s 'keeper) bowling a blinding opening spell, Colin McGill bludgeoned his way to 50 with a fair smattering of edges through and over slip and gulley and the other supported well. we mostly fielded pretty well in the gathering gloom, but our only other near successes came via three dropped chances, all by Shehzad (not so lovely lovely) and 2 of them in the same position of Bill's bowling. Bill also produced the comedy moment of the evening when he completely failed to get a hand to a steepling catch off his own bowling, grasping at thin air as the ball plopped to the ground 2 feet away :-( To be fair to Shehzad his first drop at gulley off Sethu was a toughie, the second one damaged his hand as the seam dug into his finger and the third one hit in almost exactly the same spot as the second.
Anyway, a decent enough performance given the lack of a full team!