A CRICKET MATCH
A few days back our school team played a friendly match against Govt: High School No. 2 team. The weather was fine and the sun was shining. The attendance was surprisingly large because people from the city, as well as many school college students, came to watch the match. Our opponents. Won the toss and went in to bat. They opened with Idris and Mueen to the bowling of Israr and Asif. The batsman played a very cautious game and Idris sent the ball to the boundary twice. He became more and more enterprising as the score mounted. In his fourth over, Asif, our pace-man took his revenge and Idris was clean bowled for 25 and his balls were not sent flying to the silly-mid-on. Soon after that Mueen was completely beaten by a short length ball from Israr, the spinner, and was given L.B.W. Now Fakhar and Jamil came together but they could not face the terrible outters thrown by Asif, and Jamil was clean bowled for a duck. The vacancy was filled by Majeed, but he too did not stay long and was caught behind the wicket for five. Saeed now joined Fakhar and immediately the game took a new turn and our bowlers came in for a good deal of punishment.
Our captain, Nizam, rung quick changes in the bowling and finally came on himself from the pavilion end. He proved an immediate success because in his very first over he got the wicket of Fakhar and Saeed both. Now the batsman was all out; but the tail of the Govt: High School No. 2 team wagged very well and added a valuable 96 to the score, the city team being all out for 212.
We changed places, our team came into beat while the Govt: High School No. 2 team started fielding. We opened with Israr and Nizam, but they proved an unlucky pair, both were ours for 13. They both fell victim to the spin bowler Fakhar. Fakhar was in form and his spin was deadly. This rot was, however, stemmed by Jamil and Rashid. They both played very well and saved their side from sure defeat.
Jalil was out for 71 after the interval, but Rashid continued to play and scored a faultless 143 and won applause from the spectators. The captain of the Model School team, Iftikhar, rung quick changes of bowling but it did not avail. Rashid was joined by Afzal and the two carried the score beyond 212 and our captain declared the innings closed at 243 for five wickets. Rashid was not out for 143. Thus we won the match by 31 runs and five wickets in hand.
