Kilmington Vs Venturers, Saturday April 25th

Kilmington 164-8, Rained off

Jenny, Paul Snow’s daughter, took it up to eleven in the end, after we had had six at noon the day before. She knows what to do on a cricket field and did it, quietly. So did everybody else, in fact.

If you play regularly for this club you will remember the Kilmington match as the one where you know almost all of the opposition by name but half of your own side are complete strangers to you. This is because we have to start again every spring, and have usually raised a team by means of frantic emailing at the last minute. It happened again this year.

Nikhil kept wicket. He looked as if he was used to it, which he isn’t, and it worked well except when a ball from Gregory bounced and turned. He wasn’t expecting that, reasonably enough. Chris H opened the bowling, swinging the ball in but somehow not causing as much trouble as he usually does. At the other end was Tayo. Nobody, least of all Tayo, had much idea what to expect from him, but after a few looseners he settled into a fairly decent line, and picked up a wicket thanks to a sharp catch by Simon. He should have had another, but the ball whistled at head height between Nikhil and Gregory without attracting the attention of either. Jenny dutifully chased it all the way to the boundary.

The batsmen were swift at picking off the bad balls, though, and the run rate started to balloon a bit as the bowlers tired. Paul put a stop to that, picking up where he had left off when he last bowled for us two or three years ago. When he did produce a bad ball, the batsman hit it unerringly at Tayo, who caught it unfussily. At the other end, Gregory also found the right length, if not always the right line. We needed some wickets, though, and that had to wait until Gregory got sufficiently used to bowling to start varying his flight. When he did he immediately bowled the surviving opener, who tried to put both his feet in the same place at once. The next ball was also carefully flighted, but it was a full toss. The batsman hit it unerringly at Tayo, who caught it unfussily. We were making progress.

Further progress was made by Omar, who bowled the full length necessary on this pitch and was very difficult to hit. It was a while before the next wicket fell. The left-hander who had come in played competently but cautiously, only attacking when given something to hit, which wasn’t often. Eventually he picked the wrong ball from Omar to hit, having had a long wait for a right one, and was splendidly caught very low down by Ian in the deep. His partner similarly picked the wrong ball from Gregory, and hit it unerringly at Tayo…

After Gregory and Omar ran out of overs it would have been the time for Kilmington to accelerate, but they had lost a lot of wickets and instead Chris M, simply, and Adam, rather more unpredictably, rattled through the remaining overs. Adam collected a wicket with a miscue to mid-on (Ian again), and somebody chanced a short single on Chris H’s arm, but we didn’t quite bowl them out. We were fairly happy with 165 to chase, though.

We never found out whether we were right to be happy. As we walked off the light drizzle of the previous few overs turned to rain, and the covers (they have covers) came on: the lights of the electronic scoreboard (they have an electronic scoreboard) seemed very bright. We went in for tea and, after long discussion, never quite started again: the two Chrises put their pads on and walked out to the pavilion steps to open the innings at one point, but were met by the Kilmington captain bearing instructions from the groundsman to call it off. It must be said that the groundsman was right: fifteen minutes later we drove away in pouring rain again.