Venturers Vs Southstoke, Wednesday May 1st

Southstoke 89-4, Venturers 90-3

Southstoke’s extremely reliable opening batsman clipped Ian’s second ball towards mid-on and called “wait” firmly and calmly. They waited, and watched Farooq take three paces to his right and catch it comfortably at waist height.

That was the match, really. Few wickets fell, and that was the only important one. On the slow pitch with a big slow outfield they never got going, even though only Ian bowled really well. Dan, a former Southstoke player, took a few balls to get back into rhythm, but four overs of unvaried straight medium-paced left arm was exactly what we needed. Spin didn’t help, at least not the kind that Gregory bowled, but even his occasional full tosses didn’t get treated violently. Imran produced one unplayable delivery but was still a bit below his best, also without serious consequences. Muhammad, also left-arm, might have had more than one wicket. Most of the Southstoke runs were made by the number 3, who had a couple of escapes but played well. Eventually his partner pushed Muhammad, along the ground, to Imran at mid-off and said “one”. There shouldn’t have been one, but Imran was paying no attention and the ball went through him. The non-striker, seeing this, said “two”, but that alerted Imran, who went and fetched the ball and ran him out with a perfect direct hit at the bowler’s end. Later he dropped a straightforward catch, but the bowler, still Muhammad, bowled the same batsman very soon. James R did an excellent imitation of the absent Bruce, sending down two overs of apparently bad but actually effective wobblers at the end.

Chandrabhan and Jamie set off, in no great hurry and with no need to hurry. Twelve came from the first five overs, but in the sixth the hitherto accurate spinner lost his length a bit. The one that Chandrabhan hit for four, one of only five boundaries in the match, was not especially bad. The last ball was, being a full toss, but it was a straight full toss and Chandrabhan missed it. It would have hit the bottom of middle. Farooq and Jamie, scoring almost entirely in twos, raised the pace a little but before long Farooq got a ball that did a bit. A couple of overs and five more twos later Steve contrived to glove a harmless ball from the same bowler to the wicketkeeper, but that led to a sharp increase in the run rate. It wasn’t so much that we played more shots, but that Simon is quick enough between the wickets to make the twos into threes. He and Jamie even ran a four, which could have been a five if they had needed it to be. There was no such need: we won, with Jamie making 54 of the runs, by seven wickets with thirty-five balls to spare.