Hinton Charterhouse Vs Venturers, Sunday April 28th

Hinton Charterhouse 230-7, Venturers 182-9

We were here to help celebrate the birthday of Scyld Berry, a former editor of Wisden (not the issue that has Gregory’s name in it by mistake) and purveyor of very slow but quite accurate wrist-spin. In this, we were successful.

The first ball of the match struck Gregory on the right shoulder, the second on the left shin. Had he been batting it would have been time to call the pitch inspector, but he was at slip and both balls had deflected from the gloves of Simon, diving to try to retrieve Jamie’s extravagant outswing. After that it calmed down a bit. Ian’s extravagant swing mostly goes the other way, and fairly soon one of the openers missed one. The other warned his new partner, who seemed very competent, to watch out for the one that comes back, and then failed to do so himself. This, the slow outfield and the late swing kept the scoring rate low, but as the ball got older the swing disappeared. When Jamie ran out of overs we tried some spin. The very competent number three launched a furious attack on Gregory, which was quite successful for the four balls it lasted. Then he ran down the pitch and was stumped by an enormous distance. Soon afterwards, Adi’s seam movement did for one more, but from 70-4 we made little further progress. Adi, who didn’t look like getting another wicket, gave little away; Gregory, who did though it never materialised, was more expensive. Replacing them with Imran and George didn’t change much. If anything it was slightly worse, as Imran was a bit wayward, which is unusual for him. If we had caught one of at least six half-chances we might have done better, but if we caught those we wouldn’t be playing this level of cricket in the first place. Eventually Simon got a second stumping, off George, but the new batsman proved to have a good eye and hit the ball hard. By the time Bruce bowled him the damage was done. Ritvij’s flatter spin kept the other batsman relatively quiet and at the end Bruce bowled him too, but 230 seemed like a lot.

It was. Charlie was bowled by one that straightened at the end of the first over. Jamie and Ritvij needed a bit of luck, but nothing outrageous. One of the Hinton Charterhouse fieldsmen seemed to think that Ritvij was lucky whenever the ball went into a gap, and eventually had to be taken aside and told to shut up. Ritvij continued to place the ball into the gaps. Jamie tried more violent methods: once Ritvij copied him and was told by the bowler that it was a horrible slog. This, however, was true, and the remark was probably not intended as a sledge but was rather genuine surprise that somebody so correct would do such a thing. Eventually Jamie missed one, and Josh did not last long, edging the editor to the keeper. He looked surprised to be given out, but everybody else had heard the nick. George and Ritvij carried on: as George is a left-hander, we had to despatch a party to each end of the ground to move the screen every time Ritvij scored a single, which was often. We were in a good position by now, but we needed to accelerate. Last year Ritvij played for us twice and was caught one-handed at midwicket both times: now when he tried to accelerate, he gave a third such chance, but the fielder dropped it. George did manage to step the pace up a bit, but not really enough. Ritvij continued calmly into the fifties and was finally bowled, playing back when he should have played forward, for 59. Adi, who replaced him, contributed usefully, We needed about 70 off seven overs - not out of the question - but then George got out, Simon chipped a return catch second ball, and it all fell apart. Ian and Imran both miscued to midwicket, and at the very end Adi charged the editor and got stumped, leaving Bruce to watch Gregory play out the last ball.