Given the amount of rain that had fallen over the previous few days, it was a minor miracle that the game could go ahead at all, so it was no great surprise that neither side had managed to find eleven players prepared to commit on the odd chance that there might be a game. We were able to play only due to there being an artificial wicket; the bowlers run ups were playable, if a little slippery, and apart from the one puddle at first slip, the outfield was reasonable.

Arvind and Roger opened for the Venturers. Faced with some eccentric bowling, Arvind, after being dropped early on, was soon making hay. At the other end, Roger scratched around and tried to leave as much of the strike to Arvind, who, severe on any poor deliveries (and there were a few), soon had to retire, having reached a rapid fifty. At this stage a decent score of 150+ looked very possible. But the wicket was very slow and low and scoring runs not always as easy as Arvind made it appear. Rog and later Andy both holed out to long leg trying to raise the run rate; Duncan and especially Rob T smote a few hefty blows in the final overs and a final score of 120 was reached; even with conditions fairly poor for batting, this looked a little light. As it happened, Wessex opened with two batsmen whose quality far outstripped that of any of their bowling; it was immediately obvious that they could play a bit, and they proceeded to despatch any short balls to the boundary. The early bowling of Rob B, Andrew and James was decent enough, but the batsmen were better still, and it looked like we might lose with overs to spare. Enter Rob T, who bowled fast, full length deliveries in an accurate and hostile spell. The last ball of his first over accounted for one of the openers, and the first two of his next over completed a hat trick that put us right back in the game. Then Andy V, bowling spin, appeared to have trapped Wessex’s star batsman leg before; as the umpire raised his arm, we began to celebrate, at which point he (the umpire), politely informed us that raising his arm and finger was actually his preferred gesture for indicating 'not out'. For a few overs we pegged back the scoring rate, before the Wessex opener savaged Liam’s single over, scoring several boundaries. His retirement left Wessex needing 'not very many off quite a few' (overs), but with Duncan bowling left breaks from one end, and Kev full length medium paces from the other, we put them under a bit of pressure, took a wicket or two and a executed a run out. Almost unbelievably, we reached the last over with a chance of winning the game. Duncan bowled a good over, a couple of hard chances were missed, and Wessex managed to scrape the couple of singles they needed for victory.

So, a game that featured a few good individual performances but quite a bit of sloppy cricket from both sides - needless extras, misfields, dropped catches et. al - at least ended in exciting fashion, with plenty to mull over in the bar afterwards.