Venturers vs Bathford, Wednesday June 29th

Venturers 146-5, Bathford 88-8.

We were on the main pitch for once. This resembles Lord's more than any other ground we play on, in that there is a marked slope from off to leg. The resemblance ends there. The scoreboard doesn't work but we had Alistair and he had the portable one. Bathford turned up with nine, a tenth arriving a couple of overs later, but chose to field anyway. They seemed to have agreed that everybody except the wicket-keeper should bowl two overs, which they couldn't quite keep to as they never had an eleventh player. It made for some rather unpredictable bowling.

Roger and Tom had some difficulty timing the ball - so did everybody else - and ran a lot of twos, which Roger's knee didn't much like. Roger dominated what scoring there was, but after six overs the score was 21. After that, aided by a few extras, they got on with it to such an extent that the fifty came up after another thirteen legitimate balls, whereupon Tom and then, two balls later, Shashank got bowled. That put us back where we had started but another fifty partnership followed, between Roger and David, who couldn't quite time the ball either but mostly resisted the temptation to slog instead. Eventually he top-edged a pull at a full toss from Steve Dent, playing against us this time, and was caught at fine leg. It was a bit high but he had advanced to meet it: if he had stayed where he was it wouldn't have been more than knee height.

Alistair arrived next. Roger predicted a run-out, correctly, though it needed a direct hit, and Alistair quickly followed, stumped at the end of the seventeenth over. Ilyas and Satheesh made good use of the last three, surviving a curious incident. Ilyas pushed the ball towards mid-on and set off for a run. The fieldsman shied at the stumps at the striker's end and a direct hit would have run Satheesh out, only the wicket-keeper knocked the bails off with his gloves before the ball arrived. The throw missed anyway, and eluded the keeper. The batsmen ran one overthrow and then attempted a second. This time the wicket-keeper gathered the ball and, with a huge swish, splayed the still bail-less stumps as Satheesh arrived. However, Law 28 requires a stump to be struck entirely out of the ground to put the wicket down in the absence of bails, so that didn't count. The wicket-keeper's opinion that this is ridiculous is interesting but irrelevant. In any case he had had plenty of time to put the bails back (explicitly permitted by the Laws) and had not done so. Moreover, Satheesh had probably made his ground anyway. Off the last ball of the innings Ilyas did get run out.

When we bowled most of us struggled with the slope, or perhaps with the brass band practising nearby. Satheesh, from the equivalent of the pavilion end, i.e. with high ground on the right-hander's off side, tended to overcompensate and bowl wide of off. He removed one opener cheaply, though, with late movement. He should have had the wicket-keeper, who came next, too, but the ball flew between Alistair and Gregory at comfortable catching height without attracting the interest of either of them. The other opener hit straight with some power but was trapped LBW by Rob's inducker. He seemed disappointed by the decision. Certainly it wasn't plumb. Alistair thought it pitched leg but might just have bounced over, Rob thought it was hitting middle and leg but might just have pitched outside leg, and the non-striker thought it had pitched on leg but was doing enough to miss leg stump. Perhaps the umpire got it right.

Time for spin. Gregory and Simon did not alarm the wicket-keeper but his partner did not like slow bowling and charged Gregory. Alistair stumped him on the leg side, allowing the ball to roll away afterwards. We warned him of the consequences of letting go too soon. The new batsman hit Gregory's next ball, a miserable full toss, into the distance, was hit on the pad by the next and completely bowled by the unexpectedly good ball after that. A competent but rather shotless schoolboy was mercilessly run out by his partner (still their wicket-keeper) who set off with the ball already in Tom's hand. Pete got a wicket with his second ball, Gregory prised out the wicket-keeper in the end, but once again we failed to get the last wicket. We should have run Steve Dent out, but this time Alistair did let go of the ball too soon. It made no difference, as we had far too many runs.

Fixtures & Results 2011