No, not Omar in Doctor Zhivago or Lawrence of Arabia, but Zobie in the National KO 2nd round at Brentwood. His unbeaten 81 was a leading role worthy of note as he demonstrated patience, deftness of touch and an overwhelmingly accurate assessment of conditions, not to mention the confidence to stick to that assessment.
Blackheath travelled to the reigning Essex Premier champs with confidence, but caution. As grey clouds gathered and the skippers strode out onto a scrubby looking pitch for the toss, Chris Willetts knew he would win his second toss of the weekend, even though he would have preferred not to. He did, and the away side elected to bat.
The Blackheath innings started brightly but despite Stuart Fern launching the shot of the day for 6 over long on in the early overs, he was soon back in the pavilion being caught sharply at square leg. As the Brentwood bowlers settled and the fielding restrictions were relaxed, the scoring rate dipped slightly and a series of useful 20-40 run partnerships between Zobie and Jamal Patterson, Aaron Alley, Dipayan Paul and Chris Willetts respectively then followed.
As the Blackheath innings went into it's final 10-15 overs, the ball was still doing plenty off the seam and in the air and although this meant a late acceleration from the likes of Paul Valkovics, Jahid Ahmed and Ruel Brathwaite would be difficult, it did encourage all three about their bowling stints to come.
Having anchored the entire innings however, Zobie did accelerate in the final overs and he found willing partners in James Hands and Richard Woods who helped him add an invaluable 40 runs for the last 2 wickets.
The Brentwood reply began extremely frustratingly for the Club. Despite a top class spell from Ruel Brathwaite to which the highly-rated home side openers had little answer, they had raced to 49 from the opening 10 overs. A combination of dropped catches and gifted extras (around 20) had meant the chance to apply some early pressure had gone.
A carbon copy of a Saturday dismissal saw the opening wicket as James Hands again caught at wide mid-on from a Jahid Ahmed short-ball, and when Hands himself had the other opener caught at shirt fine leg by Valkovics for 30, Blackheath had a foot in the door.
Valkovics, Hands and Woods then did what they do best and bowled incredibly cheap spells. The home side had hardly noticed that they were moving into the last 15 overs of their innings when Dipayan Paul replaced Hands at the pavilion end, but they did notice soon enough as Dipayan removed their number 3 to make Brentwood's task look a great deal more difficult.
Richard Woods finished off his fine spell of 9 overs, 2 wickets for 29 runs and Zobie Sharif also entered the attack to collect 2 wickets. Blackheath also collected 2 run outs as the home side crumbled under the pressure of the chase, but some big hits from the Brentwood lower order when they had nothing to lose meant that the last 2 overs would be interesting, the home side requiring 15 runs to win for the last wicket.
Willetts turned to Brathwaite and Ahmed to bowl those overs and the decision proved a correct one as only 6 runs were conceded from them, Ahmed picking up the last Brentwood wicket off the last ball of the game to seal victory at his former club.
This was an eye-catching victory for the Club, away from home against a good side who won their league by 60 points in 2009 but there are still areas that can be tightened up. Blackheath will do well to recall the pleasure of playing high intensity cricket and the exhilaration of winning tight games against good sides as this should provide ample motivation for both their promotion campaign and a cup run. Motivation should not be hard to come by in the next round of the National KO however, as Blackheath travel to local rivals Bromley on 27th June.
