Cricket at the Chinese University of Hong Kong

CUHKCC Team, 1996


Mano & George at Sek Kong, 1996

Match with City University of Hong Kong CC (circa 1996)

Last Sunday was a perfectly glorious day for cricket, made more glorious, I'm happy to say, by the gallant performance of our team. No, we didn't inflict a humiliating defeat on our opponents; but neither did we suffer one ourselves! One could say, we battled valiantly, and then yielded the match--not our honour--to a technically more advantaged side. Composed entirely of CUHK affiliates, our team took on City U, composed, save for their captain, almost entirely of unaffiliated, inappropriately-youthful guest players. Batting first, the CUHK opening pair, made up of Mano and David Johns, gave the team a splendid start by frustrating every effort by the bowlers to dislodge them. They were followed by some sterling performance by George Braine and Duncan Saunders, who together defied a spell of rather uncompromising bowling by the opposition, leaving the field on their own terms after knocking up 36 runs each. The next four batsmen took the total to 162 by the 35th over, and given the lack of practice, they too put up a creditable performance.

CUHK then went in to field, sorely missing our regular wicket-keeper and erstwhile captain, David Gilkes. The bowling and fielding performance, though whole-hearted, nevertheless emphasized yet again the need for Tony to go and persuade the Physical Education Department to allow us some space to practice every week! There was some good bowling, and two good catches by Phil Allen and Rogers, but, inspite of the belated discovery of a regular medium pace bowler in Andrew Laslett--we're looking forward to great things from him in future matches--we couldn't keep City U from surpassing our total by the 28th over.

So, the scores:
CUHKCC : 162 for 2 (Mano 11, George 36 rtd , Saunders 36 rtd , Nath 39 rtd, Allen 13 rtd, and Tony James 11)

City UCC : 170 for 4 (Arshad 39 rtd. Isfaq 35, Rafaquat 28, Dave W. 33)

I would be unforgivably remiss if I did not mention the invaluable contribution made to our efforts by Vera Jones and Fawzia Braine. Vera, as everyone knows, has been truly brilliant over the years as our official scorer, and we are very happy that we now also have Fawzia to reinforce this side of the team. Thanks also to the supporters who cheered us on. Hope we'll see more of you.

This account was written by Pradip Nath