Venturers vs UWE, Sunday June 26th

UWE 113-9, Venturers 115-3

UWE also call themselves Venturers, which can lead to some odd shouting in the field. We have found them tough opponents in the past but they were below their best today, or perhaps keeping their best for the Bristol T20.

On a hot and humid day the ball swung, and the bounce was low. Not easy to score quickly. Santha was a bit wayward at first, much to the annoyance of Paul, keeping. Adam wasn't. After a quick start the UWE openers lost momentum, and the first breakthrough arrived at 28 in the seventh over, with a perfect outswinger from Santha that clipped the off stump. Soon afterwards, Adam, who had bowled very well up to that point, strayed down leg for the first and only time, and Ivor, UWE's adhesive left-hander, came unstuck. Santha at fine leg fumbled the catch but held on. The new batsman drove out to deep cover and turned for a second without seeing that David had chased determinedly over the slow outfield and already had the ball in his hand. His throw was less good and sent Adam sprawling. Adam, not knowing that the batsman was stranded and that he had plenty of time to get up, shied at the stumps from his prone position and hit one of them.

The UWE batting never really recovered after that. We used seven bowlers: six got wickets. Santosh got three, two of them odd. One was a left-hander for whom he, Paul, Tom and Gregory laid a careful trap. Then Santosh bowled a full toss, which wasn't part of the trap, and the batsman simply lobbed it back to him. The other was Rohan, the UWE captain, who was the main remaining danger to us. He was hit on the pad as he advanced and the ball bounced through to Paul. Santosh started and stopped an appeal, whether for LBW or caught behind was never clear, and Rohan hesitated, turned round and saw the bails on the ground. He correctly walked off, but assuming he had been bowled: in fact Paul had stumped him and if he had turned instantly he might have got back. It was as if he had momentarily forgotten that the wicket-keeper was standing up. We failed to dislodge the last pair and they made about 25, in eleven overs, which was inefficient of us.

Our chase, though, was very efficient. Jack got bowled early, neither forward nor back, but Shashank, who has looked like making runs all year, finally did so. He has tended to be the one who gets out to a good catch or gets an unplayable ball. This time he reached fifty before the score reached 65, and after that tried reverse sweeps and all sorts of things. That soon got him stumped, but Nathan was accelerating and after he miscued to square leg, Santha and David finished the match off very rapidly.

Fixtures & Results 2011