Venturers Vs Royal Oak, Thursday May 5th

Royal Oak 87-8, Venturers 88-6

Five white vans were lined up in the car park at the start of the match. None of them were ours, but they may not all have belonged to the opposition either. Considering that nothing ever happens there, the car park at Sulis is surprisingly busy.

Royal Oak mentioned various adjustments to the playing conditions but the only one agreed on was a retire-at-fifty rule. In the event nobody on either side got to twenty, with one exception who got to 27. This was Ajay, not the Royal Oak wicketkeeper, an obviously good batsman who opened for them and immediately ran his partner out. He did this by getting to mid-pitch before calling (it wasn’t his call), perhaps assuming that Gregory at midwicket would fluff or pick the wrong end. He did neither, and Chris collected his throw efficiently. The wicketkeeper, who perhaps should have taken the first ball if he wanted the strike that badly, took out his annoyance on the innocent Imran, hitting four boundaries off not particularly bad balls. At the other end, Ian bowled the number 3 in the second of the two maidens he started with: in his third over he conceded a single, but then bowled the wicketkeeper, the ball keeping indecently low. Ajay and Gregory, in drastically contrasting styles, kept the runs down, and Bruce, taking pace off the ball, bowled two tight overs at the end when Asif’s brisker bowling was more hittable. Apart from Ian’s two, everybody who bowled got one wicket, all bowled except for a catch by Simon off Asif near the end. The rest of the batting was competent but less classy, apart from a perfectly executed cover drive from down the pitch by a batsmen who had a wild slosh at the next ball and got bowled.

We set off cautiously. Matt was slightly more adventurous than Chris, but by the time he was out in the seventh over the run rate had just dropped below 3 per over. This, in a 20-over match, is distressing. The uneven bounce and the accurate bowling were the main reasons. Asif followed quickly but Jack stayed with Chris, though not raising the run rate much, until the middle of the thirteenth over, when he too got one that that failed to bounce. Imran and Ian made brief ducks, and Asif went out to take over umpiring from Simon so that he had no excuse to bat himself below Bruce and Marco.

At this point Chris got a thin edge to the keeper and we were 53-6 after 16 overs, needing 35 from the next four. It was quite dark, because of early May and a slow over rate all round - there were only four overs of spin in the match. The bowlers operating had joint figures of 3-1-8-4. Ajay, who had played his first ball firmly into his stumps without disturbing the bails, and Simon attacked them to such an extent that there was only one more dot ball and we won the match by four wickets (to the great relief of Bruce, next in) with seven balls to spare. Simon was classical from the start; Ajay progressed from slogging to style, gaining in effectiveness as he did so. Four byes helped, and the winning run came with a leg bye with plenty of time and wickets to spare, although it was rather tighter than that when you consider whose wickets they were.