Radstock College vs Venturers, Wednesday April 29th

Radstock 167-3, Venturers 119-3

Radstock's opening batsman, captain and organiser is called Everton Griffiths. Thus he bears the surname, presumably by chance, and the forename, probably not by chance, of two famous West Indian cricketers. He doesn't reach those heights, of course, but we spent a lot of time getting the ball out of the hedge that runs alongside the ground at Peasedown so that he could hit it back in there again.

It took some while to get going. A match was in progress when we arrived and we had to wait for them to finish. They considerately left the stumps out for us; but they were junior ones and we had to go and find a full-size set. It was already getting a bit cold when Kevin and Chris opened the bowling. Kevin got some movement and caused problems for both openers, but Chris didn't find much encouragement and when Kevin started to drop short he too got hit. There was a comedy moment when one batsman hit Chris down the ground and leant on his bat to watch the ball go, only to see it stop dead in the daisies and be picked up by Fluffy. The batsman then set off for a single and was firmly sent back by Everton Griffiths. Thus frustrated, he lashed angrily at one of Chris's better-directed deliveries and gave Gregory a droppable but not actually difficult catch.

Gregory then replaced Chris and for one expensive over was entirely unable to grip the perfectly dry ball. He started with a head-high full toss, completely harmless as it was very slow but definitely a no-ball, and bowled several more in the over. Simon, though, persisted with him. For some reason he was treated with great respect by Everton Griffiths, who laid into everybody else. On the other hand his partners treated the other bowlers with great respect and attacked Gregory, though one of them gave him a second catch in doing so. We had one other success, when Sourabh produced something unplayable, but after that Mr Griffiths simply clouted every second ball into the hedge. He made 128 not out, out of 167-3, and we didn't field badly or even really bowl badly.

To get those we needed a flying start. The sight of an opening bowler in shorts and walking boots raised hopes briefly, but he was accurate and at the other end was a succession of quick left-armers. Tom and Matt did pretty well even so, and with twenty or thirty fewer runs to chase would have put us in a good position; but we had left them too much to do. Matt eventually miscued, as did Fluffy not long afterwards, both caught by the same fieldsman. After that Tom and Kevin, and the fielding side, went through the motions as it got cold and dark: Mr Griffiths rightly asked one of his left-armers to slow down as he might be hard to see against the pavilion. Kevin missed one eventually, leaving Chris W with a few balls to bat, and Tom survived unbeaten: we had made quite a decent score in the end, but not enough to be threatening in view of what had gone before.

Fixtures & Results 2009