Venturers vs Canal Taverners, Wednesday June 20th

Canal Taveners 130-4, Venturers 131-2

The standard of this match is illustrated by the fact that on two separate occasions a bowler bowled a knee-high full toss, and the batsman hit it straight to a fieldsman, who dropped it. We were in the field both times. It felt like April, both because we had hardly played and because it was raining again. Not very hard but it was quite gloomy by the end. We had been told we were on the first pitch, and we had checked earlier in the day that that meant the one with the covers at the Ralph Allen School end of the ground, but we weren’t. That isn’t all bad. On the the third pitch you are further from the abandoned buildings so it feels a bit less like playing cricket at Pripyat.

We had won the toss and chosen to bat before we found out that there were only six Canal Taverners present, so they batted. Their remaining car arrived immediately, but only six of them batted anyway and one of those faced only the last ball, from Alex. The other three wickets fell to Kevin, who was the only bowler on either side who deserved any. Harsha and Jay were ordinary but at least reasonably economical. Tom was hopelessly inaccurate and replaced himself with Gregory, who was no better. Bowling the openers, which Kevin eventually did, was actually a mistake because it brought in a competent left-hander who calmly helped himself to the runs he was offered. Fortunately he was the only one the rest being relatively strokeless, otherwise they might have got 180. Even so 130 seemed quite a lot.

In the event it was nwhere near enough. The Canal Taverners bowlers were just as out of practice as ours, and one of them broke down with a shulder injury after three balls. We would have allowed the others to bowl more than four overs each, but the match didn’t get that far. David and Chris S went along at seven an over without hurrying, mainly picking up ones and twos into the strangely deep-set fields. The partnership was broken when the bowler got a hand to Chris’s straight drive and ran David out, probably by chance. Chris ran the single that was available and looked very puzzled to find his partner missing at the end of it. Alistair made almost all the ones into twos, some nothings into ones and hit a few fours himself as Chris accelerated. Eventually Alistair was caught at the wicket down the leg side, but here the bowler deserves some credit: he had just asked for a leg gully and was trying to get Alistair to glove or top-edge his pull shot. Chris M hit his second ball for four and there was just time for Chris S to complete fifty (and ask whether he was supposed to retire) before the match ended with four overs to spare.