Venturers vs Cramer, Wednesday May 23rd

Cramer 124 Venturers 125-5

Cramer won the toss and batted first on a cool and cloudy evening.

They got off to a decent start, both the openers being prepared to play their shots; Rashid's attempted bouncers lacked the intended venom on the early season wicket and were neatly despatched. Stuart bowled very tidily and picked up a wicket, whilst some suicidal running accounted for the other opener. Coming in at four for Cramer, we were somewhat surprised to see the figure of Everton Griffiths.

After two ferociously hit boundaries from him, it looked like we might be facing a target of 150+. However, Adam and Tom R proceeded to bowl decent spells that kept a check on the run rate, Tom R even beating the outside of Everton's bat during a very fine spell. We gradually took wickets from the other end, Simon coming on with immediate effect. Simon then snared The Great Man himself, luring him down the wicket with an 'even slower ball', that Everton had played ages before it reached him, but allowing him (Everton) almost enough time to return to his crease, before Alex finally got his hands on the ball to compete the stumping. Simon ended up with three wickets from his two overs, and Alex, two stumpings.

We were chasing a target of 125. Roger and Tom opened; the first few overs consisted of some pretty random bowling from two denim-trousered opening bowlers (one green-shirted, one white); every delivery was different. Following a good start, Tom went, caught from a square drive. The Cramer change bowlers were more orthodox and accurate; the batsmen then had a rough idea where the ball might be bowled. Roger started hitting the ball reasonably well, and aided by Alex W and then Nazar, the run rate was healthy. Harjeet, who bowled quite well, went for more than he might have expected. Most of Cramer's players, who probably thought that 124 was enough to win the game, went very quiet. Stuart joined Roger and immediately proved he can bat as well as bowl, scoring 18 effortlessly, and possibly going some small way to justifying having his name printed on the back of his shirt. Roger scored the winning runs, flicking a full toss from the white shirted opening bowler for four.

A cursory glance at the statistics indicates that this may be the highest winning score that the Venturers have posted, batting second, in a 20-over game, since at least 2005.

Fixtures & Results 2010