Mohamed hopes Boyne Hill produce ‘statement win’
Captain Ziya Mohamed is looking for his Boyne Hill team to produce a statement victory over Stoke Green on Saturday as they look to re-ignite their season after a disappointing start.
Like bottom club Burnham, Hill have lost each of their four league matches so far but things should have been different on Saturday had they held their nerve against Beaconsfield.
Chasing 276 for victory, Mohamed’s men were 210-3 at one stage, but the loss of Usman Ilyas 103, and Tharushan Iddamalgoda 82, led to a collapse of epic proportions as the visitors went down by three runs.
Hill have shown they can be competitive this season, having also lost by just two runs to Gerrards Cross in their second game, however, results and the rub of the green are currently not going their way.
Reflecting on a match where they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, Mohamed said:
“It was a close game.
“We thought we were going to win and then a collapse at the end took us to another defeat. The positive side is that we had a few batsmen who scored some runs. It’s still early season so we’ll see how things go.
“Yeah, we didn’t score enough runs in the last three games out of four. The batsmen are coming out now, but we still have a couple who are yet to find their form. The bowlers are not doing so great either as our games have been quite high scoring, but hopefully we can find our rhythm soon.
“We were 210-3 at one point. Our main batsmen then got stumped and from there the pressure got to our lower order batsmen, I think.
“We should have finished it off, but we couldn't manage it. One of their leg spinners bowled well and we just gave our wickets away, hitting it to fielders and getting caught, it’s not like they’ve worked hard for the wickets, we’ve thrown it away.”
Stoke Green will be looking to extend their unbeaten start to the season and hand a fifth straight loss to Hill when they visit on Saturday, but Mohamed does believe his team will come good and expects his players to have a little extra motivation to beat Saturday’s visitors.
“Beating Stoke Green would send a message to the league I think,” he said.
“We’ve been training hard these last couple of weeks, and the guys know what they need to do. There’s a lack of confidence but we were all really positive after the game against Beaconsfield. We’ve lost one of our games by two runs and then this one by three runs so we’ve been close. We just need one win to boost our morale.”
He added: “We’re always confident because we’ve got a good rivalry. A few of the guys who play for Stoke Green now played for us a few years back. We want to win, we know they have a good left-arm spinner, but if we play him well, we’ve got a chance.”
Hill were also set to play Wargrave on Tuesday in the Julian Cup pool matches, where a victory would likely take them through to the semi-finals of the competition. They currently lead Group 2 after claiming a comfortable eight-wicket win over Maidenhead & Bray on May 17. Set a target of 70 for victory, they chased it down for the loss of only two wickets.