Venturers vs Hay Hill, Sunday August 21st

Hay Hill 62, Venturers 63-3

Hay Hill are a very competent side and have had a good season, so we really were not expecting to do this sort of thing to them. The early damage was done by Chiran and Renju, who both swung the ball late and fast. Renju followed Paul's advice not to make great efforts for pace. That gave him some accuracy at the cost of being fractionally less fast: still too fast for most batsmen but, crucially, not for Paul, who took an excellent catch. Renju deserved more wickets than that but Kevin, in the gully, failed to hold on to a fast-moving cut. He did stop it, though, and got the ball back to Paul in time to run the batsman out instead. Meanwhile, Chiran, accurate as ever, clipped the off stump with an outswinger and then induced a second, less difficult, catch to Paul.

There were two other apparent drops but in both cases we think that the umpire simply forgot to signal leg byes, and would have correctly given the batsman not out if Paul or Gregory had caught the ball. The chief but by no means only weapon of Hay Hill is called Daniel. He played Chiran with rather more assurance but got off the mark via his own knee and Gregory's. We decided to treat him as Rahul Dravid (that is, to get everybody else out instead) and after a dozen overs Santosh and Gregory were brought on. Neither found any turn but very quickly three good pieces of fielding isolated Daniel: a second run-out, of the fourth or fifth opponent this year to take on Ilyas's arm; a smart return catch by Santosh; and a one-handed overhead effort by Simon when the last real batsman drove airily at Gregory. Next over Daniel was leg before to Santosh. He seemed unhappy about it; but Santosh is sparing with his appeals, so it must have been close. Paul thought it was straightforwardly out. The last two immediately slogged catches off Gregory, and the innings was over in the twenty-fourth over. It was too early for tea, so we went back out and started planning a beer match. We thought that we should either win quickly or lose quickly, given that Shashank and Renju especially, but Santosh and Kevin also, favour a brisk approach to batting. Not so Roger, and he and Chris Middup, noting that we needed three runs every two overs, scored exactly that. To be fair the bowling was challenging and their ground fielding was better than ours, which hadn't been bad. Chris holed out at mid-off after a while but even Shashank was kept on a short rein for a while. The mood changed when Daniel was taken off and replaced with somebody willing to pitch short. Shashank hooked, for six. A fieldsman was placed to stop him, but didn't. Probably this would have worked after a while but with so few runs it couldn't be afforded. Indeed, by the time Hay Hill tried spin the scores were level. Shashank carved the first ball high into the covers, set off for a single and was spectacularly caught by a dive and one-handed stretch, as good a catch as you will see at this level. It so impressed Shashank, completing his now invalid single, that he high-fived the bowler as he ran off. Kevin was down to bat at five but came in as number four had taken his pads off; but two balls later Roger was leg before. The umpire (Gregory) was clapped on the back by the fielding side, which is not usual either, and in fact he may have missed an inside edge here. A hurriedly repadded Santosh put an end to the nonsense next ball.

We did play a beer match: sixteen overs a side, two overs per bowler, retire at 30 although nobody got that far. Paul had a premonition that something bad would happen, and it did. Chris will be more careful about fielding with his feet in the future: sometimes the ball then rises vertically at high speed. We got bowled out for 80ish, going on round the batting order except for Simon, who didn't want to bat but had to. Renju injured himself mysteriously bowling the first over, finished by Roger, who got an opener out. Shashank got a wicket with his first ball in England. Daniel got caught by Santosh again, off Chiran this time. Renju recovered, everybody bowled tidily, Kevin demolished the tail and we won by a dozen runs.

Fixtures & Results 2011