Penn Street vs Paddington

Penn Street CC beat Paddington CC by 5 wickets

Paddington CC 151 (A Ahmed 49, Archie White 4-49)

Penn Street CC 152-5 (Nick Johnson 56, Ben Cross 45)

It is always nice to welcome new opponents to Penn Street and the withdrawal of Waxlow for Covid reasons enabled us to invite Paddington to make the journey from Darkest Peru London for what we hope will be the first of a regular series of fixtures.

It was obvious that our visitors were a talented side with a number of good cricketers, but a fine bowling performance took Penn Street to a comfortable victory despite managing to drop somewhere between four (wicket-keeper’s version) and seven (outfielder’s version) catches along the way.

Bowling first on a damp pitch the Penn Street opening attack of Matt Hewlett and Archie White extracted full benefit from the conditions, with Matt at times being unplayable and Archie being extremely accurate. Indeed, for some time it looked as if Matt was not going to get into the wickets column at all, as Archie steadily picked off the opposition from the Wood End, courtesy of two catches by Sam Martin behind the wicket, one by Ben Cross at short cover and an excellent one on the run by Chris Russell at point. However, Matt was able to remove one of the openers with a ball that cut back viciously into him to gain some reward for an excellent spell.

One Paddington batsmen to offer any resistance was A Ahmed, who proved to be extremely deft at clipping the ball off his legs and not quite so good at repeatedly attempting to cut the ball when it was on the off side. With Nick Johnson picking up two quick wickets after replacing Matt at the Squirrel End he was in danger of running out of partners, but found some solid support from the lower order in an eighth wicket partnership that looked like taking Paddington to a reasonable score.

Embarrassingly. both he and the number nine batsmen were somehow undone by the alleged wiles of the club secretary, before Farooq chipped in to finish off the innings on 151.

With the wicket drying that was never going to be a terribly difficult total to chase down, but Penn Street began by making heavy weather of it as Chris Russell, Alex Woest and Farooq all departed cheaply. Fortunately, Ben Cross was playing possibly the best innings of his Penn Street career and he was ably supported by Nick Johnson in a large partnership for the fourth wicket. Unfortunately, tiredness got the better of Ben and he fell just short of his maiden club 50, whilst Nick was bowled in the effort to see the side home. This left Sam and Matt to take Penn Street over the line to another five wicket victory.