Venturers Vs BaNES, Wednesday July 7th

BaNES 106-4; Venturers 107-5

This was a very strange match. For one thing, we weren’t supposed to be playing this opposition. Our real opponents, ignoring the instructions to contact Simon in the event of problems, emailed Gregory at eight the previous evening to say that they hadn’t got a team. Fortunately Gregory happened to be present and to read his email. Further enquiry revealed that Amdocs, who were also supposed to be playing at Sulis, had no team either, so we agreed to play their opponents.

We were instructed to use the first square, on which two strips were marked. One was very green and had 21-yard stump holes and crease markings as well as the usual 22. The other was freshly cut, neatly marked out and came with a little wooden board on it saying “Friday”. So we used the green one, which actually behaved perfectly well.

Both BaNES openers were left-handed: a shorter stockier black left-hander and a taller sparer white left-hander. They made little progress against Shrey and not very much against Chris H, but they kept them out and in fact didn’t even seem in very much trouble. Chris bowled one maiden to the taller batsman that featured four booming drives, all hit straight to fieldsmen: more surprisingly still, the fieldsmen concerned in every case stopped them cleanly. Against Parth and Gregory they made at first even less progress, the taller batsman several times missing straight balls only to have them go over the stumps, if Parth’s, or spin just enough to miss off, if Gregory’s. The shorter batsman, however, confused Gregory by attacking him off the back foot, with considerable success. After about a dozen overs we made a breakthrough, of sorts. The taller batsman retired, so as to give the next man in, playing his last match for the side, an innings. He did so after playing the last ball of an over quietly, so the new batsman came in at the non-striker’s end. Four balls later he ended his farewell innings by running himself out, not having faced at all.

Despite the attack on Gregory the run rate was still not high, and just before Matt R and Nikhil started on the last four overs the remaining opener also retired, involuntarily this time, having pulled a hamstring running one of his partner’s runs. The new batsman proved to be our most effective wicket-taker, running out two of his partners by some distance, but he did keep the score moving. There were few boundaries, though, and they left us with a target of 107.

It very quickly became clear that that was nowhere near enough. Matt H started off with four to fine leg and galloped away. Karthik was more cautious and pushed a few singles, but when Matt hit a six off the last ball of the third over, Karthink responded with a six of his own next ball. They made almost half the runs in the first five overs, but near the end of it Karthik wandered across his stumps and was utterly lbw. It would have hit two-thirds of the way up the middle stump, and the next ball, identical except for being bowled to the left-handed Chris H, did.

The bowler never got the chance to try for his hat-trick. He was taken off, and Matt carried on until he reached fifty, out of 72, in the eighth over. Then he retired, which slowed the scoring, and Roger accumulated calmly. Shrey was less calm, and was bowled giving the bowler the charge, and Matt H scooped a return catch off a full toss. At this point, 77-5, it was just about possible to imagine us losing, but Nikhil, despite some odd shot selection, was as calm as Roger and left the ball with great enthusiasm. Between them they took us, with four overs to spare, to a comfortable win achieved despite none of the bowlers getting any wickets at all.