Venturers vs Shenley Chrus End, Saturday May 24th

Shenley 121 all-out, Venturers 124-1

Last year Shenley brought a South African with some serious ability and his opening spell set the tone for the match. This year he was not to be seen, and without his long string of unplayable deliveries we felt we might be in with a shout.

They batted first and while Ian G opened down the hill, Kevin made the breakthrough by bowling their opener in the 4 th over, and followed that by removing the 3 and 4 soon after in separate wicket maidens. Roger took a good catch behind the stumps for the second of these, and meanwhile Ian bowled a reasonable spell and was replaced by Simon Turner who took the 5 th wicket.

Matt then bowled arguably the best spell of the season, with his 3 overs taking 2 wickets for just 2 runs, including a wicket maiden - Kevin contributing away from the strip with a solid catch. All this time the other opener continued to bat well, despite an early drop against him, and reached his half century. He then holed out to Ian G at square leg of Fluffy's bowling, before the rest of the bowlers got into the action with a wicket each. Richard held on to one off Gregory, who then supplied the safe hands for Stephen Dent to claim his first of the season.

Prior to Gregory's wicket their captain came to the crease. Normally an opener, he came in late with the expectation of a long stand with the only other batsman still going at all, (who Gregory later removed), and was unsurprisingly extremely upset when Ahmad first bowled a maiden, followed by second over of nearly unplayable balls that got through his defences. He spent a long time staring at the pitch on his way off, but there was no detectable gremlin and he had been bowled off his pads.

This brought a rapid conclusion to things, after a really excellent bowling performance with only Ian G missing out on the wickets, and we bowled them out with a massive 10 overs left. A snack tea was supplied by Roger due to some staffing shortages prompting an earlier start time, and then Richard and Fluffy opened the batting, with a lowly 121 the target.

Richard batted steadily, and made a really decent 50, although towards the end he was aided by a cluster of dropped catches. The last of these was intentional as he had passed 50 and felt it was appropriate to scoop the ball up, but the winner of the Shenley Teflon award fumbled it, so Richard retired anyway. Fluffy's batting was a mixture of obstinacy and sweetly timed boundaries. After a long spell of dot balls, interrupted midway through by a beautiful drive back over the bowlers head to the rope, he was conclusively bowled in the 7 th over, but after some confusion Simon T confirmed it was a no-ball and Fluffy was recalled. Thereafter he accelerated nicely with several more boundaries and continued good running with Richard, until he eventually fell LBW to the last ball of the first change spell.

Ian G came to the wicket prior to Richard's retirement, and was joined afterwards by Andy Watts in his first game of the season. Ian's innings was quiet but included 2 identical stand-and-deliver pulls through midwicket. At the other end, the most startling aspect of Andy's innings was that his absence at nets has apparently had absolutely no negative effect and he struck his second ball for 4. In fact his innings has as many boundaries as dot balls and the partnership was unbroken when the score passed the required amount. Rather predictably it did so with a 4 by Andy, who finished 21 not out, and the Venturers completed their 3 rd successive win of the season in the 27th over.

Fixtures & Results 2008