Esbjerg vs. Århus

A drama in Esbjerg. The return match against Esbjerg started dramatically, and ended dramatically.

Firstly the weather was dismal in Århus, and no one knew if any cricket could be played at all. And if that wasn’t enough, we were missing three players when we ventured out from Århus in two cars.

But the further south we got, the better the weather got, and when we finally reached Esbjerg, we knew that the game was definitely on.

But just few kilometers from the Cricket ground, one of the cars had a flat, and they had no spare tire. With much trouble we managed to assemble, and the 40 overs game got under way.

Calle, the captain for the day won the toss, and with the ground still wet, decided to bat first.

Nik and Jens opened the batting, and started out very positively, blocking the good stuff, and punishing the bad. The score crept up, until Nik was out, to a doubtful lbw decision.

Calle replaced him, and looked comfortable from the start.

But soon, the bowler decided to bowl the one ball, that always gets Calle, and he was on his way of the pitch. Meanwhile Jens kept on playing well, and with help from Nikhil and Rajesh, reached his maiden half century.

And this 50 was brought up in entertaining style, punishing the young Esbjerg bowler, by knocking out 3, 4s and a 6s in his last over. But it had an end, and he was caught, trying to put it over the boundary again. Young Oliver, was up next, and with shifting partners, kept on pushing the score.  But with 8 players, a team is not in the best position to bring up a big score, and it ended when Oliver got stumped trying to up the tempo.

Thus Århus managed to put up a total of 112 runs.

Esbjerg seemed confident that they could knock out the 113 runs quickly, and then be on their way home. But they were wrong, despite the fact that we were only 8 men in the field, we were exceptionally sharp. Though Josh had some difficulty with the wet artificial wicket, he got the first breakthrough. Esbjerg’s opener was trapped lbw, and was of the pitch soon after he got in. second breakthrough was thanks to Calle who swung the ball nicely and removed their danger mans (the one who got 80 last time) middle peg. Esbjerg was by now on 14 for 2, and had stopped looking comfortable.

Their next two men was able to speed thing up a little, but all the runs came from risky running, and no boundaries. It was Jens who started their collapse, a brilliant catch by Rajesh, saw the partnership broken. Oliver started Bowling dangerously from the other end, and soon he was on a hattrick, after a good length ball, had split up the wicket. But it wasn’t to come. But the quick removals had put us short of to wickets for a win, while Esbjerg needed some 20 runs to win. Eventually they got them, but had to fight very hard to reach the 113.

Had Århus been in Esbjerg with a full 11 men, the situation might have been different, but we definitely had a good and exiting day on Esbjerg’s beautiful Cricket ground.

/Elias