Kilmington vs Venturers , Sunday June 15th

Kilmington 154 all out: Venturers 103-8 (35 overs)

We keep losing to Kilmington. Perhaps they are better at cricket than we are. This time we did bowl them out, but for more than we wanted and more than seemed likely. Almost literally bowled: we hit the stumps nine times.
The exception was leg before to Simon Shaw. But we dropped only two clear catches, neither of them easy (and both off full tosses, so the bowlers couldn't complain much) and our ground fielding was mostly competent. The bowling was a bit wayward at times, though, and theirs wasn't: therein lay the difference.

Paul Snow was not wayward. He bowled very straight and hit the middle stump with his fifth ball. As the batsman walked off it began to rain, lightly at first; but an over later it was a downpour and we retreated to the pavilion and rescheduled the match to be 35 pvers rather than 40. The rain did not last long. Paul remained accurate, but Matt found the wet ball hard to control. The second-wicket pair rumbled along at four and a half an over and Chintan, replacing Matt, found control no easier at first. It was not until Chintan?s third over that we got another wicket (bowled of course) and a third followed very soon, via a big inside edge. The surviving opener, known to his team as Spence, although his surname is not, like many of his teammates, Spencer, but Churchill, seemed less confortable against Simon and was then totally deceived by a slower, shorter ball from Chintan, which broke a bail. Simon collected his lbw and we had claimed four wickets for 15 and were back in the match. But Kilmington have several good young players whom they give a game to in these friendly matches, and after another wicket each from Chintan and Simon we found ourselves obstructed by a tidy left-hander and a spare Spencer. Gregory lost his line and Adam his length, which didn't help, but Gregory's liking for left-handers told in the end and Adam finished things off.

154 in 35 overs was attainable but we needed some quick runs at some stage, which meant we needed a score from at least one of Kevin, Ahmad or Chintan, and someone, preferably Roger, to bat for a long time. Two of us did bat for a long time, but they were Simon and Gregory and by that time the match had gone. Fluffy played one impressive pull and then played across a straight one; Kevin got a good ball early on. We saw the openers off cautiously, and then tried to attack the spinner, the ubiquitous Spence. The innings disintegrated: Roger miscued to mid-off; Max, Ahmad (who had just begun to look dangerous) and Chintan simply missed. Matt steadied things a little, but it was too late for him or Adam to do much and Gregory joined Simon with a dozen overs to go and about eighty needed.
They got thirty of them, Gregory making an entry for the Bill Owen Award for Tedious Batting (2 not out from 37 balls, the sole scoring shot coming from the 35th: not having any runs to count, he counted his balls faced instead). Simon was a little more enterprising, but there was never the slightest danger of our getting anywhere near the target.

Fixtures & Results 2008