Bath College vs The Venturers, Thursday
3rd May 2007
Author: Gregory Sankaran
Lost by 89 runs. Bath College 162-6 Venturers 73
Like a trails of ants they came, the two migrating hordes: weary, angry, struggling under the weight of their burden. Sometimes they stopped to talk, or scurried out of the way, but mostly they plodded silently on. It's a long trek to Pitch 3, especially when you are carrying the kit, and it is even further back to Pitch 1 when you discover that you have the wrong pitches and must swap.
When we eventually settled down in the right place we were fielding. Kevin, having his first bowl of the season, was less accurate than usual but still didn't give much away. Chintan struggled for line. Kevin bowled one opener off his pads, but Bath College's usual assortment of people in tracksuits proved to include some rather competent cricketers this year, and we soon ran into difficulties. There was a left-hander who didn't look competent, but was, and a right-hander whose competence was evident even though he was wearing a bright red shirt. Simon replaced Chintan, whose direction-finding equipment was still playing up, and Steve replaced Kevin when he ran out of overs, but the runs kept coming: not embarrassingly fast, but quicker than we'd have liked. They did put the ball in the air a lot, and eventually Steve induced a top-edged pull down to long leg, where Ian Gillard caught it with ease.
Another, burlier, left-hander arrived. He hit his first ball, from Gregory, to a considerable height and just out of Simon's reach, and continued on the principle of two blocks and a swipe for some while. As he didn't always connect with the swipe this was not too bad for us. But both batsmen kept finding the gaps in the field, mainly from above and not always the gap they were looking for. Steve suffered especially badly from this. Chris nearly brought off a stupendous catch at long-on, then fluffed a rather easier one off his own bowling: twice the burly left-hander was all but bowled by Gregory through the swipe. The second time he should have been stumped; but the next ball he made the mistake of playing an orthodox shot, a sweep rather than a swipe. On many grounds we play on it would have been six, but here it provided Ian G with another chance to show off his catching technique. It is really very good, quite out of keeping with the rest of the team.
On this occasion, though, Ian was outdone by Toby, who put in an entry for Catch of the Season, sprinting from behind the stumps to square leg and catching a skier over his shoulder as he fell. We were stunned, Toby especially; and he batted at number 11 with a damaged hand, although that seems not to have been caused by the catch. After a few overs it began to look as if he would soon be needed anyway. We were chasing 162, which was too many: Roger and Ian B started cautiously, which was sensible enough; but the need for runs pressed Ian into chasing a ball he would rather have left. Matt looked briefly uncomfortable and Simon didn't even have time to do that, given out LBW first ball. Ian G survived a little longer but it was left to Roger, Kevin and Chintan, as usual, to tidy up.
Most of the competent batsmen then chopped balls onto their stumps, Chintan being particularly unlucky. That we did make some sort of a score, even exceeding our admittedly dismal effort at Monkton Combe the day before, was due to Chris, who chose to attack and did so rather successfully. It was getting very dark by this stage, though, and when another wicket fell the rest went at once.