Venturers vs Hinton Charterhouse, Wednesday June 3rd

Venturers 141-5 Hinton Charterhouse 144-4

Hinton Charterhouse have a first team, most of which were available for selection for our annual evening match against them. In recognition of this fact they organised the bowling to bowl twoovers each, giving all of them (and incidentally us) more of a game. This was fortunate considering the margin of victory, but they rather cancelled out the effect by allowing two of these players to open their batting. But before they could show off their considerable talent we won the toss and batted. Actually this decision probably has no influence on the fixture – it never has in the past. It may have been influenced by three players still driving to the ground, but they arrive to see Tom R and Roger opening and batting beautifully. Roger drove fluently off the back foot to the rope repeatedly and Tom played shots all round the wicket for a score of 35-odd before falling. Roger bounced a ball off the pavilion roof and into the car park before being replaced by Alistair who blazed 22-odd of 14 balls, pulling the ball especially well. Following his dismissal Nigel hit his first ball for four. He was organised and effective for a run-a-ball innings before being given out LBW to a quick ball that maybe looked a little high. We had a solid base to build on so Andrew and Magic (a.k.a Chris Middup) perished looking to push on. Saurabh scored a few at the end and we finished up with nearly 150 on the board despite some very useful bowling, especially from their spinners who turned the ball a lot.

This sounded like a good score, but tempered with the knowledge that our first team is not as good as their first team and most of their first team were in attendance. Kevin and Nigel opened and bowled some good balls, both batsmen dropping the ball between fielders a couple of times, but also hitting fours and sixes. They gave perhaps one proper chance each, one of these a fast nick behind off Nigel early on being too quick to hold. The pavilion roof took a fair battering during the course of the innings as they put on over 100 in 11 overs, but in the gathering gloom the sound of the ball slapping hands rather than tiles indicated something abnormal and the left-hander walked off, having picked out Nigel on the square leg boundary. This was from Andrew's first ball – a full toss – and a little later a right-hander lifted him to Ian at backward square leg, the ball being caught in the usual style.

Their batting was high quality and perhaps the result was decided as early as the selection of seven first team players on the team sheet, but it is also fair to say we played very well and did not deserve the clobbering shown on paper. We batted well and held three good catches, with Nigel and Alistair fielding particularly well. Once the right-handed opener retired with 50 we had some new batsmen to bowl at and several wickets fell. Ian was gifted a bonus wicket from his slow first ball thanks to a sensational catch from Tom R, running from long on to long off and diving forward. In the gloom Ian bowled one of the other batsmen but they passed the target score with four or five overs to spare. Adding 10 runs to our total per first team player would have made the match competitive, even with all their self-imposed restrictions. Certainly we didn't play badly at all, they were just too good - apparently they chased a score over 200 the previous week.

Fixtures & Results 2009