Priston vs Venturers, Sunday 13th May

Venturers 112, Priston 113-2

What will probably remain our largest crowd of supporters for the season turned up to the delayed start of the season. They were half a dozen thirteen-year-old girls and they quite rightly took almost no notice of the cricket, which was fairly bad; but at least it was cricket at last. Even so we were short of a player (Alban fielded but declined to bat). Paul Snow cycled up the lane at the end of the match, too late to be talked into playing.

David and Chris made an encouraging start, though only David scored with any freedom. One of the Priston opening bowlers bowled brisk but occasionally misdirected outswing; the other bowled mostly accurate but unturning slow left-arm from over the wicket. The contrast eventually confused Chris, who hit the slow bowler to mid-on. Ilyas had immense trouble with the quicker bowler. At one point he played an extraordinary leg glance off middle stump with both feet pointing down the wicket. It probably wasn’t deliberate so you couldn’t really say that he tried to do it again next ball; but he did do it again, missed and barely waited for the inevitable LBW decision. David hit the slow bowler to mid-off, who caught the very easy catch with one hand. We were getting into trouble.

Kevin and Richard got us part-way out of it. Richard struggled a bit with the slowness of the pitch. Kevin seemed more comfortable, but then hit across the line and was as much LBW as Ilyas had been. Jay Kay, whose real name, Jayakrishnan, is not actually that difficult, swung hard at everything. As long as he kept missing or edging he was safe, but soon he made full contact and there was plenty of time to catch the result. By then Richard was out, caught at the wicket off a thin edge. Alistair contributed a couple of straight drives but the innings ended quickly. Even if Chris had been allowed to give Gregory out LBW to his first ball as the bowler ran in to deliver his second it wouldn’t have been much quicker.

We had nowhere near enough runs unless we bowled very well. Richard did, but the rest of us didn’t. Kevin and Gregory, who bowled Priston out last year, and Jay Kay, all bowled far too many bad balls, and Siddanth, who got considerable movement, was inconsistent in line. We dropped a few catches, mostly hard but some easy. The ground fielding was a bit better but Alban, a Nadal fan, suspects Priston of dosing their grass with blue clay after pulling a muscle doing a sliding stop. Richard’s bowling, though, was by far the best thing we did all day (Alban’s sliding stop was probably second). He beat the bat consistently and the wicket-keeper occasionally, and got some lift out of a surface where nobody else had. He got both the wickets that fell, both bowled; but lacking both bowling support and a decent score to defend, he couldn’t actually do anything about our rather inglorious defeat.