Venturers vs Holt, Sunday May 29th

Venturers 240-7 Holt 98

Holt weren't very sure of their strength but they started off competently enough. We thought their fielding was fallible, but as they ran three of us out, including both openers, we obviously weren't right about that. Paul, who had been fairly comfortable up to that point, was the first victim. He attempted a third run to long-on and was beaten by a direct hit, by a foot or two. Roger, less fluent than usual, went too far while thinking of an impossible single, and didn't quite get back. They had made twenty apiece and given us a brisk start. This was an opportunity for Renju, but his cricket video in the morning had been the New Zealand classic "Bat like Chris Martin".

Alastair has a batting guru (or had borrowed "Batting with the Buddha" from Renju) and had been given the mantra "treat each ball on its merits". This worked until they started bowling him balls without any merits. By that time he and Santosh had already provided the bulk of the innings, each doing better than any ten of next day's Sri Lankans. Santosh might have made more with a better bat. Alastair might have made more with a better scoring wheel: it was more of a spoke really, as he scored almost entirely with the pull. Santosh was more varied, and therefore quicker. They rotated the strike well, and as Alastair is a left-hander it was difficult for the bowlers to bowl a consistent line. Soon after reaching his fifty, though, Santosh fell leg before. After Alastair's mantra broke down he continued to pull regardless, and was dropped somewhere on the off side, but worked his way past his first fifty for the Venturers and was only dismissed very near the end of the agreed 35 overs, when he played no shot at all to a perfectly straight ball. By that time Ajai and Satheesh had come and gone, the latter the third run-out victim. This was simple good fielding and there wasn't much that Satheesh could have done about it. Kevin and Santha added a few more, but Holt, who had lost control a bit in the middle, kept things fairly tight towards the end.

Santha struggled slightly with the slope and although he mostly bowled well he dropped short too often. The Holt openers dealt efficiently with him. At the other end Renju bowled at a furious pace, fast by any club standards, but inaccurately. Even on this slow pitch he was alarming. Again the Holt openers dealt well with it, but it was clear that we couldn't allow him to bowl at that pace to the tail. Paul, keeping wicket, wasn't happy either. Once only one of the openers backed away: the ball followed him, tailing down leg, and Paul followed the ball. It clipped the outside edge and flew through where the wicket-keeper had been, head high and curving to leg again. Paul, wrong-footed, could do nothing. A few seconds later Gregory at first slip waved his left hand in the general direction of the ball's path, just as Santha cut it off on the fine-leg boundary.

This wasn't helping us. Simon decided it was time for some spin; but before we got that far, Santha removed the right-handed opener, caught at deep mid-off. That left Gregory to deal with the left-handed opener. At about the seventh attempt he got one in the right place and spun it away, and Paul stumped him. A couple of balls later Paul got another stumping, so close to the off bail that the bowler thought at first it was bowled. Paul was worried that he might have got in front of the stumps (which is forbidden territory to the wicket-keeper until the ball reaches him or is played by the batsman) but the umpire gave it out. As the stumping itself was close he must have been watching attentively to do that, so Paul was presumably not quite out of bounds.

Santosh turned his leg-breaks extravagantly at the other end. He has a quicker ball that is very much quicker and agreed a signal to Paul to indicate it. When the time came he found that Paul couldn't see him, so he signalled to Gregory instead. Gregory hadn't been told about the signal and had no idea what it meant, so it was a complete shock to everybody when the fast ball arrived. It didn't matter because it flattened the off stump.

In fact nothing mattered because Holt then gave an exhibition of how not to play offspin, impressive but easily surpassed by the next day's Sri Lankans. One of the Holt batsmen cut against the spin, straight into Kevin's hands. The new batsman swept Santosh brilliantly for four, the shot of the day. Simon started to think about giving Satheesh or Alastair a bowl, or having one himself. Santosh and Gregory took the matter out of his hands by collecting the last five wickets in eleven balls, for three runs. Santosh knocked the leg stump out in revenge for the sweep: Gregory removed three tailenders in an over, two bowled and one caught first ball by Renju; and Santosh produced his quicker ball again.

Fixtures & Results 2011