Venturers vs Nomads, Sunday July 12th

Nomads 181-7 Venturers 173-5

Unknown opposition, this. They started slowly against Kevin and Paul, reprising their act from the Bristol T20, and one of the openers lost patience and gave Alex C, not keeping wicket for once, a sharp chance at mid-on, which he caught. The other opener was so bogged down that he managed only a single in ten overs, and the fact that there were only ten of us was hardly noticed. Alban (aged seven) fielded to make up the numbers but the ball didn't come his way until the thirty-ninth over. More of a problem was that we had no more seam bowling,and the main pitch at Sulis was decidedly helpful to seam bowling. There was less in it for the spinners. Nevertheless Gregory got an immediate breakthrough: the slow opener swiped wildly at the first two balls he got from him, nearly getting stumped the first time and giving Alex a second, even sharper, chance the second time. Alex caught that too. Gregory's second over produced four boundaries and a dropped (difficult) catch, but after that he bowled steadily but unthreateningly. Simon S was more consistent but the results were about the same overall. He picked up one wicket and should have had another, a left-hander who gave Gregory an easy catch, which he dropped. What kept us in business, though, was our ground fielding. There were three runouts, two by Simon and one by Alex again. This kept the run rate down, but when it came to the last few overs we had to use Andrew and Thiagarajan. They didn't bowl badly, and Thiagarajan in particular found plenty of turn, but keeping batsmen quiet is not what their bowling is really for and the left-hander, who hit almost everything to fine leg, profited. They weren't extremely expensive overs, though, and the slow start meant that the total was not unreachable.

We didn't make a very quick start either. They had some capable seam bowlers and Roger and Rahul were rightly content to keep their wickets intact. Then Rahul, turning for second run, strained his back and had to have a runner, which added to the general confusion caused by frantic bulletins from Cardiff, where four of us were watching England's desperate attempt to save the First Test. Roger and Rahul both eventually fell trying to accelerate and we never quite caught up with the rate. Nomads always seemed to have something in reserve, and when it mattered, about eight overs from the end, we lost two wickets in quick succession. Kevin stayed to the end but he and Thiagarajan had too much to do. The final margin of defeat was small, but it was more comfortable than it appeared.

Fixtures & Results 2009