Marist Midnight ventured up to Lyneham to face the mid-tier Wests Glory Hunters. A heavy dew left the pitch and outfield saturated. The contemplation to bat on a spicy pitch, or bowl with a soggy ball was not a decision for Midnight in the end as they lost the bat toss and were sent in.

The spicy pitch worked against Midnight, with the team in an early hole at 3/9 after 5 overs, each batter losing his stumps to a straight ball. The leadership team of skipper Nate Hamilton and VC Hugh Williams set about a repair job of the innings and put on a 50 partnership at better than a run a ball to get the innings back on track. Hugh racked up his first retirement of the season when it was very much needed and brought up his season century in what has been a breakout season for him with run scoring.

Nate continued on his way, punishing the bad balls and respecting the good ones with excellent technique. It was only an excellent catch that managed to get his wicket, one shy of a deserved retirement, but with a well compiled 38 off 44 balls and hitting his 200 run milestone for the season. A steady drumbeat of wickets suppressed Midnight’s trajectory and the run rate tapered off over the last 9 overs before the team was bowled out in the 30th over. The score of 119 was about 25 short of a par score at Lyneham but we were in the contest.

Orlando Pabian opened the bowling on a still damp pitch and skittled one of the Wests openers with a full ball at the stumps with his second ball. Nate took the second over and with his sharp first ball he dug one into the pitch to get at the batter’s ribcage and had the batter playing on, which brought up his 10 wickets for the season. Unnerved at Nate’s pace, the next batter in was pushed back onto his stumps and out hit wicket. At 3 for 8 and a batter short an upset was on the cards and the Wests boys were looking like a group of lads who had just lost access to their social media accounts (oh, wait….) Fill in Ranbeer Singh showed he could compete in Stage 3, playing up from Stage 2, clean bowling one batter, whilst Aiden Henry reliably chipped in with another wicket in the 16th over. It proved to be the last wicket taken though and with Wests ahead of the run rate Midnight needed to take a couple more wickets to put some pressure onto Wests but it wasn’t to be. Wests hit the winning runs with 7 overs to spare.