Venturers Vs Railway Tavern Crouch End, Saturday June 13th

Railway Taverners 136-5, Venturers 126-8

This was an amusing but not very competitive match against, or rather with, a touring team from north London. There were fourteen of them, varying greatly in age, race, size and ability to play cricket, but all determined to have a good time. They seemed to like one another, which is not always the case. So they lent us a few players and we lent each other fieldsmen (Gregory dropped Omar, by which time neither of them was quite sure which side they were on), and there were two comical run-outs involving their players, and one of their batsmen was leg before to Gregory and simply waved good-bye and walked off as soon as the ball hit him. Of our players, Ian C bowled seven overs for ten runs and somehow failed to get any wickets, Omar and Roger made runs, and Gregory had a go at being captain and didn’t make too bad a mess of it. Everybody had a good time and the match was reduced to 32 overs so that Railway Taverners could go to the pub, which turned out to be a very sound plan as it started to rain hard just as we finished. We lost, we think, but nobody was paying much attention by then.