Cricket: Nazir slays Winterthur with six appeal

A blistering demonstration of clean hitting earned Nomads’ skipper Azeem Nazir a century and contributed to a daunting total well beyond the reach of Power Winterthur in the weekend’s league games. The legside boundary at Winterthur may be on the short side, but several of Nazir’s drives cleared the long-on and long-off boundaries by 30 metres in a 113-run spree as the Nomads raced to 282 for 9 off 40 overs on Sunday.

In reply, Power Winterthur got off to a good start and reached 90 before the fall of the first wicket after 16 overs. But with the heat, uncropped outfield and memory of Nazir’s aerial bombardment perhaps to blame, successive top-order batsmen lemminged themselves at the hands of Vishel Molasi’s very gentle right arm seamers as he took a five-for inside three overs, ending with 7 for 38. Only skipper Sajid Safiat stood firm, his 60 runs padding out Power Winterthur’s total of 129 all out after 29 overs.

At least Winterthur can console themselves with Saturday's fine all-round performance against Zug when they notched up almost 300 from their allotted 40 overs to set up an easy win. Tariq Khan top scored with 85 before claiming three wickets, as did Sajid Safiat, who also proved lethal at point with two run-outs by the time Zug were all out for 153.

The SCA League East team will be hoping to use the same formula into next Saturday’s Pickwick Cup semi-final against Zug. “We’re confident of a win,” said Safiat. “We just need to bat first if it’s dry, to take advantage of the hard wicket, set a big score and learn from the Nomads defeat.”

In the central league, Basel’s form proved wanting again as they crashed to 113 all out away to Cossonay. Fine bowling from the home side’s Matthew Hutton (3 for 18), Robin Shah (2 for 20) and Rod Nish (4 for 22) – playing in his last game here – set up a simple target. Nish and Shah then shared the batting duties and each collected a half-century before Cossonay reached 114 for 8 to seal the win.

Basel CC’s Gareth Jones said: “Cossonay were deserving winners; they outplayed us in all facets of the game. Rod Nish deserves a special mention as he’s going back to Australia. He’ll be missed in Swiss cricket and especially at Cossonay where he has been a fantastic player and a major contributor to them starting the junior wing.”

In the west league, lunchtime rain put paid to top-of-the-table Geneva CC’s hopes of repeating their easy win over Geneva XI three weeks ago. Geneva Sri Lankans were luckier with the weather in their game against Cern, where only 10 minutes’ play were lost to the weather as Cern tumbled to 102 all out in the 27th over in reply to Geneva SL’s 226-8.

Meanwhile, Alpine CC manufactured another batting collapse after working themselves into a strong position to dismiss Winterthur CC for 150.

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For official results please visit the Swiss Cricket Association website.

Match results: http://www.icc-europe.org/SWITZERLAND/DATABASE/2009/results.shtml

SCA League points table: http://www.icc-europe.org/SWITZERLAND/DATABASE/2009/tables.shtml