Another bright, sunny day dawned in Kandy. We awoke to the sounds of barking dogs and the Moslem call to prayer. We had a fairly short bus ride to the university cricket ground in Kandy to play Kingswood College. We won the toss and for the fourth time batted first. Lachie and Zac got us off to a brisk start and we were 36 after 5 overs. At this point the opposition brought their spinners on. All the teams seem to have at least 5 spinners and get plenty of turn. This slowed the run rate considerably and we limped to 7/103 after 30 overs. Our tour guide Malinda was so concerned he paced around the oval hoping for something to happen to save our bacon. Enter the swashbucklers, Ben P, Tim and Ben D. With their devil-may-care attitude, a bit of luck and some lusty hitting, they took the score at the end of the 40 overs to a very respectable 199. Ben D was particularly entertaining, hitting the ball into the clouds on a couple of occasions and scoring 22 off the last over.
With a pretty reasonable total we were quite confident we could defend well enough and take away a win. Unfortunately, as Thommo so aptly put it, "we shot ourselves in the foot". Wayward bowling, ill discipline in the field and some positive batting took the game away from us and Kingswood passed our score in the 36th over.
On the way back to the hotel we stopped off for some retail therapy to try to drown our sorrows. "Genuine" Ralph Lauren polo shirts, cricket shirts and "real" Omega and Rolex watches were the favoured items and everyone returned with happy tales of their bargaining prowess and their cheap, imitation merchandise. Back at the hotel everyone settled into their routine of cards, pool or a relaxing spa and massage.
No comments:
Post a Comment