What are the odds of you losing your wallet and then finding it in the same place after three years with everything intact? Minimal, perhaps even next to impossible but not if you are a member of the Peterborough Town Cricket Club. Well, none of the Peterborough players found their lost wallets in the same place but they pulled off something similar in the cricket field.
In one of the rarest of rare occasions, Peterborough picked up 7 wickets in 11 balls when the chasing side – High Wycombe Cricket Club – needed 3 to win in the final two overs to end up winning the match by 1 run.
The ECB National Club Championship match taking place at the Peterborough Town Cricket Club in Northamptonshire, saw one of the biggest collapses in the history of cricket.
In the 40-overs a side match, the chasing team, Wycombe were inches away from victory at 186 for 3, needing just 3 runs in two overs when the dramatic collapse took place.
The initiator of the collapse was a medium pacer named Kieran Jones, who is not even a regular in Peterborough’s first team. Jones, brought into the attack in the penultimate over of the match, more to complete the formalities than orchestrate a turnaround, picked up four wickets in his first four balls including a hat-trick to set the cat amongst the pigeons in the Wycombe batting line-up.
Three of Jones’ victims were caught behind and the last one was a leg before. Jones got the important wicket of George Russell, who was batting on 21, in his first ball of the spell.
The equation for Wycombe though, was still simple, 3 runs off 6 balls with 3 wickets still in the bank. The strike was with Nathan Hawkes, who had made his to way 58 without facing much difficulty from the Peterborough attack. 16-year-old Danny Malik, who can be described as a part-timer at best, was given the responsibility to bowl the final over.
Malik had gone for seven runs in his only over in the match. The off-spinner himself would have had very little idea on what was to follow next. Hawkes, having full confidence in the lower order, took a single in the first ball of the over, something he would end up regretting.
Malik struck in his next ball, when No. 7 Conner Haddow was caught at mid-on. Peterborough’s hopes turned into a possible chance of winning when Malik trapped George Lasseter for a golden duck.
Needing 2 runs off three balls, No.11 Ben Hoggan survived one ball before getting bowled off the penultimate one as Peterborough registered a remarkable victory by 1 run.
Six Wycombe batsmen – from No. 6 to No.11 - went back into the hut without troubling the scorers and Hawkes was left stranded at the non-striker’s end with 59 beside his name.
The victory took Peterborough to the round 5 of the competition, which will be played on July 15.