Bradford 39 vs Venturers, Saturday September 8th

Match 1:Venturers 92, Bradford 39 95-6. Match 2: Bradford 39 123-4, Venturers 80.

This end-of-season event consisted of a 20-over match with pretty much full teams, followed by some tea and a 16-over match with whoever was still there. We lost them both. If, in a 20-over match, two of your bowlers take five for 20 between them, as Gregory and Gaurav did here, you expect to win and it is a bit mysterious that we didn’t. Nobody bowled especially badly. The main problem was that, apart from Chris, we didn’t actually make any runs to speak of. The bounce was low and did for Puneet straight away, and thereafter only Kevin gave Chris much support. Gaurav contributed a few at the end. Bradford 39 also had only one truly effective batsman, but he hit fours where we had hit singles or twos, and had a little more support. Even so, if the number 8 had been given out stumped, as he probably should have been, before scoring, we might well have won. We could hardly complain, as Chris had equally probably got away with a nick to the keeper half-way through his innings.

Even for the 20-over match we had been lent a player and in the second match numbers were dwindling. They went on batting and almost immediately produced two of the finest run-outs of the season. In both cases they played the ball straight to Srikanth, saw him fumble, ran like crazy, noticed that he hadn’t fumbled much, yelped, panicked, ran to the same end and got stranded. In between Gaurav produced something unplayable, but the fourth-wicket partnership repaired the damage, and more. Gregory broke it eventually but we made no further progress. We had too many to chase, especially as there were only eight of us by now, but Puneet in particular ensured that we were not embarrassed.