Kingswood Vs Venturers, Wednesday May 15th

Kingswood Staff 128-7, Venturers 124-5

Not the most serious match, this one. As often happens at Kingswood we ended up bowling all the overs from one end for a while, because the batsmen, and still more the wicketkeeper, can’t see the ball when it is delivered from the other end against the low sun. The trouble is then that the bowler, and still more the umpire, can’t see what is happening at the batsman’s end. One of the Kingswood bowlers tried to change the angle to improve this, not by switching to round the wicket but by switching to left arm. That worked, but he was immediately no-balled for being outside the return crease, and after a few inaccurate deliveries he reverted to right arm.

It was a little more serious at the start. Jamie bowled very well, but Imran was still below his best, both batsmen were competent, and we didn’t really look like getting a wicket. True, there was a perfectly catchable chance to slip, but we all knew that Gregory’s slip catch the previous day had been a complete fluke, and he didn’t really look like catching this one. Chandrabhan eventually removed one opener, and the other was removed by a pre-match agreement to retire on reaching 35. Chandrabhan was too quick for the historian who came next, and nobody else really threatened anything much, beyond unconditional violence in the case of a stray rugby player. That worked briefly, but unconditional violence is not a good approach to the turning ball. We got into a slight tangle somehow and ended up with Gregory rather than Bruce bowling the last over, but we more or less got away with it.

Our chase was a little slapdash. Farooq hit an enormous six but turned down about another six runs in perfectly good singles. Ritvij was very scratchy at first, but gradually settled and was also removed only by the 35 rule. Nobody else did anything very much, but Jamie and Chandrabhan and Matt S all contributed. Kingswood used some rather occasional bowlers and we perhaps didn’t take full advantage of this. On the contrary, we got out to them. At the end they brought back their most serious bowler to defend eleven runs, and Matt, and Alex who had only just come in, couldn’t quite prevent him.