Venturers vs Bathford, Wednesday 8th August

Venturers 149-2, Bathford 95-6

We got off to a bad start when Chris, who has twice been our top scorer recently (admittedly with 19 and 22, though we did win one of those) was bowled for a duck. But that turned out to be as good as it got for Bathford, who handicapped themselves a bit by all bowling two overs. Only the openers seemed much better than tthe others, though, so we might have done quite well anyway. As it was, Alistair and Puneet progressed in a fairly untroubled manner except when they tried to run, in which case there was all sorts of trouble. The closest Puneet got to getting out, though, was a stumping, which he survived because the wicket-keeper funmbled. As he dabbed his bat down rather than running it in he survived by a very slender margin indeed. Alistair, having made 37, got out comically. He played absolutely no shot at all to a ball from an offspinner from over the wicket that pitched six inches outside his leg stump (Alistair is a left-hander) and turned a little. It passed behind his legs and he watched it carefully as it collided with his middle stump. Alistair’s explanation was that he thought the bowler was a leg-spinner, although the bowler’s action and the behaviour of the seven balls he had already faced from him migght have suggested otherwise: in any case, even had the ball gone straight on it would have missed the leg stump by very little. This did Bathford little good, because Kevin added a rapid 30 against, it must be said, some very random bowling.

We ended setting then 150 exactly to win, precisely as we had had a couple of weeks previously. We had got half way. Bathford did better, but not very much better. They had three real batsmen, plus some useful ones. One of the real batsmen was cleaned up by Mark very early on, so the next partnership was critical. Harsh kept them from scoring quickly and the consequent need to attack Gregory soon led to a stumping. The other batsman was dropped twice off Tom before giving Simon a return catch. Alistair, having a rare bowl, picked up two wickets, one a slightly fortuitous stumping in that the batsman simply wandered, the other a well-judged catch in the dark by Roger. In between Simon also picked up another wicket: a miscue that was falling between the bowler and Mark at mid-on, reachable by either of them, was claimed by Alistair, running into the picture from cover and running off again with the ball.