Bradford Town Vs Venturers, Wednesday July 23rd

Bradford Town 129-6, Venturers 130-1

It looked as if we had a lot of batting and Simon wasn’t captain, so we might have batted if we had won the toss. We didn’t. Bradford also had plenty of batting and the first signs were not promising. Shrey and sometimes Chris underpitched and got pulled a lot. After a while one of the batsmen attempted a drive off Chris instead and hit it straight at Doug. As it was coming out of the sun Doug had only a vague idea where it was until it hit him on the chest. Thus alerted to the ball’s whereabouts, he adroitly caught it. We still seemed to be in trouble. It turned out, though, that hitting spinners was more difficult, or else that Bradford were less good at it. Matthew’s first over included four absolutely rank balls, one of which ended up in Chris’s hands, but thereafter he bowled well. Gregory’s spell was similar, the only differences being that his four rank balls were issued at the rate of one in each over, rather than all at once at the beginning, and that two of them ended up in fieldmen’s hands. Doug’s approach was similar, and ended with Ian catching a huge skier off his last ball. Nikhil dispensed with the bad balls, thus giving nothing away but not getting any wickets either.

They we handed it over to the various Matts and Matthews and watched them get the runs. Matt R was cautious but solid until he reached for a wide one and edged it, by which time he had Matt H had given us a good start. Matthew B struggled for timing at first but became more fluent just as Matt H went in the opposite direction, and they kept us well ahead of the rate. If one of them had got out it might have slowed us down, but with Sanket, Ian and both Chris H and Chris M to come we weren’t struggling. Some people, notably Sanket, didn’t have anything much to do at all: unfortunate, but difficult to avoid sometimes in T20.