Rode vs Venturers, Sunday September 5th

Rode 212-8, Venturers 45

We had a full XI but Agnelo had to drop out for very good reasons at short notice, leaving us shart again. Rode lent us a young but very capable fielder. We, or rather Paul, started with a bang. His second ball yielded a scrambled single; his third removed the number 2, who stood there for a few moments as if the ball he had just played firmly into his middle stump had been somehow illegal or immoral. It was probably just disappointment at getting out first ball. Paul clean bowled two more good batsmen with his late swing, deceiving one into playing not shot at all and losing his off stump. Kevin also intervened, but by this time Iain was keeping wicket because Alex's damaged finger was preventing him from doing it properly. Iain was mostly competent but he made the mistake of allowing Chris M's throw to hit the stumps. When it didn't, quite, Iain was in no position to stop the ball and although Vijay tidied up quickly there was enough time for the previously stranded batsman to regain his crease.

That proved to be a major miss, because the reprieved batsman kept his captain company in a fairly big partnership. He had several more slices of luck along the way, especially against Paul. Unfortunately Paul only got a few balls at the captain. The way he was bowling he would very likely have removed him, but once Paul ran out of overs things began to go wrong for us. Santha was wayward. Gregory was all right to start with, and the batsman's luck ran out at that point. In the previous over he had already pulled firmly for four when Gregory dropped short and now he did it again, to the puzzlement of the bowler ("How did that happen?") who was sure that he hadn't given him enough room for the shot. He was right: out hit wicket, which doesn't often happen.

If the new batsman had been told his cat was under the floorboards at the start of his innings he would have done best to leave it there for a while. But you can't be breathalysed at the crease and he gradually steadied, while the bowling got worse. The captain, meanwhile, exploited the idiosyncrasies of the ground. He played a shot semi-deliberately into one of the trees that stand inside the playing area at one end: you can be caught off them, but nobody ever is and Kevin waited patiently for the catch but it never got that far. Gregory was switched to the other end and hit back over his head, which would be out at the other end under the local rule about not hitting into the housing estate. Steve Dent, after a couple of impressive overs, also lost his line. Only at the very end did we make any progress. Gregory finally removed the captain, very well caught by Iain off an inside edge. His by now hung over partner clumped one from Chris S past Chris M at head height: the latter, seeing it at the last moment, casually collected it with his left hand "like an apple in that Magners ad" (Kevin). The new batsman ran down the crease and bashed the next ball into Santha's hands, but there was no hat-trick: the last ball of the innings was quietly turned to fine leg for a couple.

They had far too many runs, and a left-arm opening bowler. He didn't swing it, as Paul had done, and if anybody had got in against him he would have been playable; but he was quick, and Chris M (pulling), Vijay (playing inside the line) and Iain (playing outside the line) all got bowled in rapid succession. Chris had at least hit a four first. At the other end, Santha was LBW and Kevin also missed a pull. The injured Alex, batting one-handed, didn't last long, though the left-armer was off now. Chris S, who had been watching all this, strokeless, from the beginning, decided to play a shot now that Paul was with him, and skied the ball to mid-off. Paul missed a full toss. We were 28-8 (effectively 9 as Agnelo was, of course, absent) and about to lower our score against Pedigree, itself our lowest for many years. The serious bowlers were off now, though, and Steve and Gregory set themselves to survive. Gregory even hit a couple of off-drives, although Chris's remained the only boundary, and their partnership was by far the largest and longest of the innings, though more than half the runs they added were extras. But in the end, presented with a straight full toss and the opportunity to become top scorer, Gregory miserably missed it.

Fixtures & Results 2010