Bowlers Union: Hornchurch Athletic cc

Shaz Rehman

Shaz Rehman R/H bat, Hornchurch Athletic cc 3rd XI - 4th May at Holy Cross.

A first look at Shaz, was fairly short as he was dismissed Tom Jones - CT Abhishek Mishra for 13. The one 4 that he scored was the shot through the cover region. I'm writing this at the end of the week and I can't recall if I bowled at him or not. As he was dismissed cheaply today I can only work with the observations made on the day and as with most club players he's strong on the leg-side as the wagon wheel suggests. Approach-wise - relatively positive - looking to score fours, no evidence of nurdling the ball around looking for singles. Batted at No.6.

The weather for this game was awful - Freezing cold brisk northerly wind, cloudy interspersed with showers. We came off twice once for hailstones.

To be fair, this isn't a good representation of his batting, I have played against him before and this doesn't represent his abilities. Check playcricket and see if he has any stats or have a look around the T.Rippon website.

Update 6/7/20 - Found the wagon wheel for a game in July 2019 which I'd mislaid. This was played at one of their venues in Hornchurch. I've over-laid this wagon wheel with the one earlier in the year. The game in May is the blue lines and the July game is red.

Spencer Duke________________________

40 Overs game - Holy Cross - 4th May - 2019

Spencer Duke - Left-Handed Opening bat. In this game scored 64; bowled A.Mishra caught Tom Jones.

This was a miserable game played in freezing cold weather with brisk northerly wind. We came off twice at least for rain and hail-stones.

It was so cold I forgot to photograph the score board, but Hornchurch collate the scores and up-load to their website thankfully.

A good player with a good range of shots, not over expansive, a steady player that appears to value his wicket.

If anything slightly more shots on the leg-side, but had plenty of options through the off-side. The 4's were primarily scored through the leg-side.

I bowled against him and he got the better of me and the 4's on the leg-side would have been through the shorter boundary and may well have been off my bowling? I've already put it out of my mind as I bowled badly.

The main observation (this applies to all of the players in this game) was that if the bowling had been tighter and the line predominantly outside or around the off-stump, the runs wouldn't have come so easy and we may have been in the game. But, I guess that's a pretty universal approach in club cricket, but it's one that needs to be considered and one that you should be able to adopt and follow through with if you're getting smacked for 4's and 6's through the leg-side.

The wicket seemed to play okay and one of their bowlers who was a youngster of about 14 'Ethan' got some decent bounce out of it off of shorter seam up deliveries. I couldn't get the ball to turn off the wicket much, but that may have been my crap bowling. When I got the line right e.g. outside the off-stump I wasn't going for runs and the ball was hit predominantly to the fielders.

Definitely a player who's wicket you want cheaply.

Update July 2020

Found some old wagon-wheels from 2019 and have been able update Spencer Dukes.

This is here is an over-lay of the game in May 2019 (Above) and a game later in the year on July.

Looking at the 2 over-lapped it does look like he's predominantly scoring with sweep shots to through square-leg and backward square legs, so one of your better players might cover that area and the other area you need to have a good fielders in is the cover and extra cover. As mentioned above try and have your best bowler bowling on and around the off-stump and this should thwart his scoring.

I've got virtually records of the July 9th game, but Spencer Duke has written up a report that you can find here

There's a couple of other batsmen, but there's so little info even looking on their website I've not been able to identify their full names.
N.Rowe (N.03)?

"Paul" (No.4)

Lee Carter R/H bat Not much on Lee, I didn't get a copy of the score book, so not sure of where he came in to bat - definitely in the top 5 though and looked to be positive.