South Wraxall vs Venturers, Sunday August 2nd

South Wraxall 231-6, Venturers 122

We had been short of players for this match. Chris M found some colleagues from HP who were willing to play, but one of them failed to turn up (we don't know why yet). South Wraxall kindly lent us a couple of fielders, so we had eleven fieldsmen, but only nine to bat. Most of these can bat, though, and enough can bowl, so we were not without hope.

Cricket at South Wraxall is a picture of a prelapsarian England as imagined by Tennyson or Rupert Brooke. Vast trees stand around the ground, one of them inconveniently close (four if you hit it, even on the full) and a celebrity-owned ancient manor overlooks it. The facilities are a bit basic, which somehow only adds to the charm. We bowled, on a pitch barely distinguishable from the rest of the square, itself barely distinguishable from the outfield; but it played well enough.

South Wraxall's most notable batsman is Hamish: his brother keeps wicket, so just at the moment they are temporarily known as Umar and Kamran. This is rather unfair on the South Wraxall wicketkeeper, who is no more incompetent than the average wicketkeeper we come across. He also fielded for a long time for us. Hamish batted, and with his young opening partner made a good start against Agnelo (sourced by Chris M from HP) and Santha. They didn't bowl badly, and two or three times the ball went in the air in an uncontrolled way, but it never fell near a fieldsman. They probably did give away slightly too many boundaries. So did Gregory and Kevin at first, but once they settled the run rate dropped back sharply. It helped that Hamish has got out to Gregory several times, not always cheaply, and was convinced it was going to happen again. It did. After four overs without a boundary his eyes lit up at the sight of a horrible half-tracker and he spooned it into the air to Santha at square leg. Deprived of a fifty, he stalked off, plotting his revenge.

For quite a long time, that was as good as it got. Several more balls looped annoyingly over fieldsmen, from both bowlers. Kevin's back raised objections and he asked to be taken off, claiming to be bowling rubbish, which wasn't obviously true. Chris M replaced him, and Simon replaced Gregory when he ran out of overs. One catch did go to a fieldsman, just about, but he dropped it (it wasn't easy), and the score was 160 when finally another miscue, off Simon, reached one of the substitutes. That eliminated the other opener at last, and Simon got the other partner next ball, stumped by yards. Then there was another annoying partnership, including a rather successful assault on the bowling of the Chrises; but as the overs ran out the batsmen took more and more liberties against Simon. A juggling catch by Gregory, who usually drops catches off Simon but mostly catches them off other people, at long-on, broke the partnership, and in the last over Simon completed five wickets with a clean catch at long-on (Kevin this time, as it was the wicket-keeping brother who is a left-hander) and another stumping by Alastair.

So we had made inroads, but somehow they had accumulated 231, which was always likely to be too many. The opening bowling was not especially threatening at first, but it was tight and Roger and Chris M made only slow progress. Chris was slightly unlucky to be out as it was a slip catch, which we don't see many of, and Hamish also juggled before catching it. The bowling changes provided some respite as the new bowlers were less accurate, but it also seemed quite likely that we would get out to them and we did, Roger putting one straight up in the air and Alistair lasting only a few balls. Chris S looked n control, though, and he and Agnelo gave the innings some substance. The run rate was about half what it needed to be, so we weren't threatening anything. They even resorted to some short stuff to try to dislodge Chris, which wasn't very effective on a slow pitch. To be fair, Agnelo had bowled a short one to one of their batsmen, also without noticeable effect. Chris reached fifty with a pick-up over square leg for six, and had to be told afterwards that he had got that far because he thought our applause was for the shot. But soon afterwards he played back to a half-volley. Agnelo was given out by Chris M caught at the wicket: he was of the opinion that, on the contrary, he had been embarrassingly far from the ball and had made a sound by hitting the ground. A long debate about this and the absence of the other player is expected at HP later. Kevin and Santha both swung briefly and to little effect. Gregory edged his first ball to the wicketkeeper and started to walk off, and Hamish executed his carefully planned revenge. He had enjoyed Gregory's duck so much that he decided to make him do it again, so he politely turned him round and led hm back to the stumps, muttering something about there being only nine of us. Gregory should have countered that the pub was open and kept walking off, but instead he succumbed and made a second duck a couple of balls later, pushing vaguely at a straight one.

Fixtures & Results 2010