Venturers Vs Bristol Venturers, Sunday July 3rd

Venturers 91, Bristol Venturers 92-2

Only Ajay was at all comfortable batting, and he hit the only three boundaries of the innings, all in the first five overs. This was after Jack had got a thin edge to the second ball of the innings, so his partner was Chris, who played sensibly; but in the next over Ajay got out, followed almost immediately by Abishek, and all our strokemakers were gone. Others resisted, in Charlie’s case for a long time (he made 22, with three twos and sixteen singles, before being run out), but even Matt’s energetic running never got the scoreboard moving much. On the slow pitch, forcing the pace simply got people bowled, and eventually we subsided for an obviously inadequate total in the 33rd of what were supposed to be 35 overs.

Because we had made so few, Bristol didn’t need to force the pace. If the occupied the crease they would win. One opener forgot this and swiped at Gregory, with the usual results: the other got a good ball from Ian. The next pair, though, are experienced and calm cricketers and they simply took the runs that were available. Gregory and Pratik gave them little (Gregory bowled over the wicket to the left-hander, which is a great rarity, to deny him runs), but eventually their line started to wander and our ground fielding started to fall apart, and in the end the batsman walked calmly over the line with seven balls to spare.