Season 2 of the Pattaya Indoor Cricket League (PICL) started on 13 Jan 2020 with more teams and an amended format, now 6-a-side with 9 overs per innings and 7 teams in the league. Rugby School Thailand (RST) now have 4 teams – Vipers, Cobras, Pythons and Keelbacks. Asian All Stars (AAS) have 2 with AAS and AAS Indoor (AASI). PCC make up the 7th team. 2 matches will be played on Mondays and 1 on Wednesdays until early March 2020.
Season 2’s inaugural matches were between RST Pythons v Cobras and PCC v AASI. The Pythons won the first match by 1 run.
In the PCC match, AASI won the toss and chose to bat. AASI opened with Hardik and Ravi who made an excellent start by scoring 41 with no losses in their 3 overs. Their aggressive stroke play took Andy Emery for 18 in one over. Bassu and Ravi took the crease and the scoring rate slowed due to Wez Masterton bowling a bunch of wides and Bernie Lamprecht bowling a tidy-ish over with 3 dots and 8 runs. Ravi and Bassu scored 23 but importantly preserved their wickets. 77 for 0 after 6 overs. Happy and Jatin, both big hitters, took the last 3 overs. They bashed Andy for 14, Wez for 17 and Trevor Moolman for 12 with no loss. It appeared that PCC’s normally sharp bowling attack had been blunted by forceful batting. A grand total of 120 for 0 and a difficult score to beat.
PCC had to reorganise as 2 players were unavailable, so a PCC umpire, Dave Samways, took up the willow and Luke Stokes, who was still recovering from knee surgery and turned up as a spectator, was pressed ganged into service as the hobbling wicket keeper. They took the first 3 overs with Luke having Andy as a runner (Happy very kindly allowed this). This didn’t work too well as Andy went for an unattainable 2nd run and left himself stranded, so Luke was run out. It didn’t help that Happy had Luke caught by Jatin in the next over. The third over saw a recovery as Bassu went for 18 but the damage had been done. 30 for 2 would have been on par had it not been for the lost wickets.
Wez and Bernie were next up, whereupon Wez drove Jatin’s first ball down Ravi’s throat at cover. Despite the setback and the loss of 5 runs, they bashed away, ran well and added 43, aided by some wides and 7 from a No Ball. 73 for 3 after 6 overs and nothing in it. The final 3 overs were taken by Trevor and Andy. Again, disaster struck early on as Jatin’s 2nd ball had Trevor caught, but they didn’t give up and added 36, but it was not enough to compensate for the losses. Final score was 124 reduced to 104 for 4 and a loss by 16 runs.
Best batsman was Ravi. Best bowler was Jatin and MotM was Jatin (17 runs, 2 wickets and 1 catch).
