[Many thanks to Gavin McLoughlin and The Hills CC. This article was first published on http://www.thehillscricketclub.com/]
On a sun-baked September afternoon in a manicured Castle Avenue grounds in Clontarf, The Hills Cricket Club won the Bob Kerr Irish Senior Cup for the first time in its history. The Milverton men were comprehensive 8-wicket victors after a thoroughly clinical display saw Merrion outclassed.
Having won the toss, Merrion captain John Anderson elected to send his troops in to bat, but a lively start from The Hills posed his openers no end of difficulties. When Anderson's deputy Dom Joyce closes his eyes tonight, the spectre of Nazeer Shoukat peppering his off stump will haunt his dreams. Shoukat dovetailed nicely with the powerful Max Sorensen to limit Merrion to the most meagre of progress through the first ten overs, though Joyce and partner Ben Ackland somehow managed to emerge with their wickets intact.
A fired-up Tomás Murphy was the next to pose problems, with the umpire taking his time to turn down a big appeal to have Joyce caught behind. With ball in hand, the pugnacious Murphy is quite a sight, half-shuffling into the crease in a deceptively gentle fashion before hurling the ball down the pitch at frightening speed. The breakthrough, however, was to come from the spin of Mark Dwyer at the other end. Ackland charged down the wicket and swung his bat with sickening violence, but was able only to edge the ball into the grateful paws of Nicolaas Pretorius.
Dom Joyce continued to ride his luck. First, he spooned a lukewarm effort up into the air off Luke Clinton's stylish medium-pace, with the ball landing inches beyond the despairing grasp of Cormac McLoughlin. Max Sorensen then came close to pulling off a difficult catch, but Joyce survived once more as the runs began to flow a little more freely.
Shortly after reaching 50, Joyce was left decidedly less than gruntled after being dismissed in a bizarre, controversial fashion. To those of us operating without the benefit of television replay, it appeared that the ball looped off his foot before he was promptly stumped by Pretorius. An argument with the square leg umpire ensued, with the Merrion man claiming that Pretorius had hit the stumps with his hand rather than the ball, but he was left with no choice but to return to the pavilion to be replaced by Tim Lang.
A needle would soon emerge between new man Lang and Hills bowler Max Sorensen, and the clash would do no favours for Lang's batting, summarily dismissed as he was by a venomous delivery from Murphy that clipped the bales off the stumps. Only the most flimsy resistance came from the remainder of the order, as all The Hills' bowlers got in on the wickets with Merrion limping their way to an eminently reachable total of 153.
Hills openers Jonathan Andrews and Darryl Calder struggled to find their rhythm early, but nerves were settled when Andrews clipped away a pretty boundary off his toes, before bludgeoning a full toss from Alex Chetkovich away to square leg. Despite a creditable start, the failure to dent the partnership seemed to suck the life out of Merrion, illustrated by the noticeable dearth of chirping from their fielders. Those that tried to disturb the batsmen's confidence were drowned out by the sounds of a rambunctious pick-up game contested by the kids in the corner of the ground.
Their misery was compounded by another sweet blow from Andrews, on this occasion a crisp drive that just outpaced the chasing fielder to the boundary. But just when it seemed like this might be a procession, Andrews was dismissed by Damian Poder, with the task of chasing victory now falling to Calder and Mike Baumgart.
The transition was seamless as this canny partnership pushed The Hills steadily toward the required total. Darryl Calder imposed his will with a series of boundaries, a particular highlight coming as he sized up an Anderson delivery before swatting the Merrion captain through mid-wicket with disdain. Baumgart's innings was a virtuoso combination of touch and power, the batsman crushing the spirit of Alex Chetokovich with 2 consecutive textbook cover drives reaching the boundary. However, just one delivery after clipping a sweet boundary through mid-wicket, Baumgart was bowled by Neil Brown for 36, bringing Cormac McLoughlin to the middle.
The wicket re-kindled Merrion's optimism, but their hope would be short-lived as Calder quickly re-established The Hills' supremacy with a picture-perfect drive bringing up a well-deserved half century. The tension deepened as he and McLoughlin patiently continued to chip into Merrion's total, with the latter eventually creaming Brown through cover for a cathartic boundary.
By now, victory was inevitable, and how appropriate it was that it fell to Calder to smash the winning runs to the boundary and send The Hills' partisans into raptures. A historic victory, then, and one of which all concerned with this club should be proud. Congratulations to Nazeer Shoukat and the boys.